


Bit By Bloody Bit

by Dark_Fic4



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Torture, season 3b spoilers, the Dark One's dagger
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-01-19 16:36:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1476604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Fic4/pseuds/Dark_Fic4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zelena has the dagger, and she's going to make the Dark One regret the choices he's made...bit by bloody bit.  She'll break Rumplestiltskin into pieces if that's what it takes to make him properly obedient.</p><p>Eventually, Belle's going to have a hell of a time putting the pieces together again.</p><p>Warning: Very Dark fic!  Lots of triggers.  Picking up after 3x16.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note the warnings! The Rape/Non-Con warning is for chapter 3, but there's torture in this chapter.

His knees started to ache within a few minutes of Zelena’s departure.  The command that had sent him there had been non-verbal, but no less powerful because of it—and neither had been the pain that ripped through his body upon receiving it.  Zelena’d stormed out, as she tended to do when she was in a temper, but she’d left Rumplestiltskin on his knees, and now he was stuck. 

The dagger worked like that, he’d realized almost a year ago with an utterly sinking heart.  Oh, he’d known in theory how very thoroughly the dagger could control him, but until he’d felt the soul-constricting dominance in practice, Rumplestiltskin had never thought much on it.  Zoso had obviously not felt like explaining much about the curse when he’d tricked him into killing him, and Rumplestiltskin had spent three centuries keeping the dagger out of anyone else’s hands, so he’d never experienced it firsthand.  He’d known letting it fall into someone else’s hands would be bad…he’d just never realized it could be like this.  Never realized that the control would be so _complete._  

Zelena didn’t even have to give a verbal command.  Her thoughts, coupled with her magic and her hold on the dagger, were enough to send Rumplestiltskin crashing to his knees and pain ripping through his system.  White flashed before his eyes, and though the pain was not as great as she had caused him before—Zelena wanted him to _listen_ , after all, to her gloating and to her fury—it was the fact that she could cause it that frightened him so much.  He’d never expected the dagger itself to be an instrument for torturing the Dark One, but it was.  It bound him up more thoroughly than any cage, with invisible chains of magic wrapping around him and holding him to whatever its holder wanted.  And once a command was given, it _lasted_. 

Which was why he was still on his knees when Zelena returned several hours later. 

She cocked her head in a mock question, smiling at him.  “Did you finally decide to be a good little Dark One and kneel to your mistress?” 

Rumplestiltskin glared, feeling his lips twist up into a snarl.  They both knew why he was on his knees, and it wasn’t because there was a submissive bone in his body. 

“Are you still angry at me?” Zelena asked in that childish voice she loved to adopt, leaning against the front of the cage and peering down at him.  The dagger was in her hand, of course.  It never wasn’t, not in his presence, even though his curse would not _let_ him take it from her.  That was the catch, the one he hated the most.  He couldn’t harm the individual who possessed the dagger, couldn’t take the dagger from them…and couldn’t even pick it up if it was put down. No, the holder had to either lose possession of the dagger or it had to be handed to the Dark One. Otherwise, he could do nothing. 

“ ‘Still’ is a very poorly chosen word, dearie,” he spat, hating looking up at her and taking refuge in a sneer.  His fury was the only defense he had, and they both knew it was a flimsy one.  

“Oh, are you trying to fight your curse again, Rumple?”  She threw him a pouty face, but he didn’t miss the gleam in her eye.  “We both know that won’t work.” 

He could only glare, still on his knees and already feeling his curse well up inside him.  His head was starting to pound, Zelena’s words digging deeper and deeper, stabbing hooks into his soul and shredding it.  No, he couldn’t fight his own curse.  Rumplestiltskin had learned that from vast personal experience, had been left screaming and convulsing as his own magic tore into him for trying to resist a simple command from Zelena.  The first time he’d tried to fight had been back in the Enchanted Forest, when the Witch had ordered him to kill Belle.  The fact that he’d been in a fog after being brought back from the Vault and then absorbing Bae had been the only thing that let him hesitate for so long, and even then the curse had built and built, pressing in on him and making it hard to breathe, to think, to feel anything but pain. 

Later, he’d learned that it was far worse, and even in the depths of his madness, _Rumplestiltskin_ had not been able to resist the curse.  He was the Dark One, and that dagger _owned_ him.  Particularly now that he was fully, if heartbrokenly, himself.  Fighting against the curse only wound up with him obeying in the end, and— 

Suddenly, Zelena opened the door to the cage, drifting inside and wearing that bright half-mad smile of hers.  Rumplestiltskin watched her warily, trying not to swallow and wishing he could get away from her.  That desire must have shown on his face, however, because she quirked a nasty grin at him and said “Stay down.” 

Had anyone ever _dared_ treat him like was some pet to command, Rumplestiltskin would have ripped their heart out and crushed it before their very eyes, probably after tearing them limb from limb and making certain they survived the painful experience. But now he could only _stay_ , trapped on his knees more thoroughly than he could have been if she’d chained him there.  Slowly, Zelena reached out with her free hand to stroke his hair, and he jerked his head away.  Or tried to.  The last thing he wanted was for her to touch him, but Rumplestiltskin could barely even flinch away.  Despite his best efforts, his head only moved an inch. 

A sharp yank pulled his head backwards; Zelena had buried her fingers in his hair and now pulled his head back to expose his throat.  “I think you need a lesson in the cost of defiance,” she told him, her voice no longer playful.

“I think you’re looking for an excuse,” Rumplestiltskin snorted, letting anger fuel the sharpness in his voice, using it to mask the way his heart was pounding wildly.  “We both know what I can and cannot do, dearie.  So let’s not pretend you’re doing this for anything other than your own amusement.” 

“And I think _you_ need to learn to be properly submissive, _slave_ ,” Zelena snapped.  Resistance always angered her; how many times daily did she remind him that she was the one with the power?  As if he could forget. 

“Not very likely.” 

“We’ll see about that,” the Witch replied darkly, and movement caught the corner of his left eye as she gestured with the dagger. 

That was all he saw.  Agony exploded within his body, lighting nerve endings on fire and making Rumplestiltskin convulse helplessly.  He couldn’t move; his curse held him on his knees and Zelena’s hand remained locked in his hair, but stars exploded in front of his eyes and all he could do was scream.  Claws of magic tore into him as spasm after spasm shook his body; his own magic was his torturer as the curse translated Zelena’s desires into pain.  She held him under for longer than ever before: a minute passed, then two, and then finally five while Rumplestiltskin screamed, shaking and twitching until he was hoarse and would not have been able to keep himself upright if Zelena had not been holding him up. 

Finally, she waved the dagger and the pain stopped, leaving him gasping for air and shaking sickly.  The cage was spinning, and what little Rumplestiltskin could see of his surroundings was a blurred mess of darkness and tiny pinpricks of light.  Lightbulbs?  A final convulsion ripped through his body as the pain tapered off, and Zelena released him to collapse into a heap on the floor. 

A long moment passed before he could make out the shoes just inches away from his face, his eyes still trying to roll back in pain.  His muscles were still spasming and his limbs twitched a time or two.  Stopping them was utterly beyond his control, and a breathless whimper escaped as he managed to start breathing again.  Rumplestiltskin’s heart was still thundering in his ears, sounding like a drum being beat on the inside of his skull.  Everything hurt, and his chest was suspiciously tight, his throat unbelievably raw.  Magic still raced through his system, _his_ magic, magic he could no longer control without a command and that burned as much as the pain did.  This wasn’t the first time Zelena had felt the need to hurt him using his own curse, but had undoubtedly been the longest.  And now she stood over him, chuckling and watching him struggle for focus. 

“Get up,” Zelena ordered, and before Rumplestiltskin could begin to contemplate making his leaden limbs respond, his curse took care of the problem for him.  Numbness bled into shooting pain as his knees protested the sudden shift, but there was no getting around the command.  Staggering to his feet as the dizziness finally receded enough to let him see straight, Rumplestiltskin watched Zelena warily, still breathing hard. 

He hated this.  Hated being defenseless.  Hated having his own magic used to control him, to hurt him.  Rumplestiltskin had never considered himself a particularly courageous man, and what Zelena could do to him _terrified_ him, because she’d been right when she told him—so many times—that he couldn’t hurt her.  Perhaps more importantly, however, he couldn’t stop her from hurting him.  And she _wanted_ to.  He could see it in her eyes, could see the anticipation and the glee.  Zelena had always been the type to lash out when someone bested her, and now he was more than a convenient target.  Regina had outsmarted her, had taken everything she’d ever wanted, but Rumplestiltskin had always been the puppetmaster.  He’d known she was unstable and unsafe when he’d rejected her, but he’d been untouchable then, with nothing to fear.  He had never once imagined that the power dynamic between them could shift so dramatically. 

She grabbed his hair again, viciously twisting his head around to make him look straight ahead as Zelena stepped close to him, her left hip brushing into his right as she leaned forward to speak in his ear.  “I’m going to make you regret what you said earlier.” 

“And which bit would that be?” he asked, tension ripping across his shoulders and using all his self-control to sound as if he didn’t care.  As if he didn’t know how he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop her. 

“You know which part.”  He could feel her snarl against his face, her lips were so close.  The dagger came up again, and Rumplestiltskin flinched slightly despite his best efforts not to.  But the pain did not come immediately; instead the dagger came up to rest against his throat, the sharp edge nestling up to his collarbone. 

“Ah,” Rumplestiltskin said casually, allowing his tone to turn to the old sarcastic sing-song of mockery. “About how I chose Regina over you, and how I’d do the same thing all over again?” 

Taunting her was a bad idea, but what else could he do?  Zelena was already determined.  She did not, however, respond in the furious manner he’d expected.  Instead, Rumplestiltskin suddenly felt the dagger bite down into his collarbone, its tip tearing into the already tattered collar of his shirt as the blade sliced into skin, deep enough to hit bone. 

He screamed, knees buckling, and did not have to look to see the latticework of dark purple and black lines bursting outwards from the wound.  Rumplestiltskin had seen it before, knew what damage the dagger did to his body.  It created wounds even he could not heal, sent acid running through his veins; even a slight cut was poison, not deadly, but horrible all the same.  Yet before he could fall, Zelena’s sharp command cut through the fog of pain: 

“Stay standing!” Her hand was still tight in his hair, and yanked to keep his head back, the dagger still at his throat.  Rumplestiltskin swayed and stumbled, the left side of his neck on fire as Zelena ground the sharp edge into his wound. 

His hands, useless at his sides, clenched into fists.  Near the beginning, back when her control had been something he still thought he could fight, Rumplestiltskin had tried to push Zelena away when she came too close, unable to hurt her but still not willing to be submissive.  But she’d ordered him never to do so again, and like all other commands, that one stuck.  Until she changed her mind or someone else acquired the dagger, Rumplestiltskin would be utterly unable to push her away.  Or to pull away from her.  She’d commanded he never do _that_ , either. 

His chest was heaving now; it took several moments for the rapid burn to die down, for the acidic taste of the dagger’s cut to dull enough for Rumplestiltskin to focus.  His head swam with pain, making him dizzy all over again.  The agony was near-on crippling, and a shadow of it would linger until the wound closed on its own.  No amount of magic could even do so much as mitigate the damage.  He just had to live with it, shaking in pain though he was. 

“I thought you said you were going to change the past,” Rumplestiltskin rasped at her.  “What happened to your ‘second chance’?” 

Another yank on his hair; the dagger went right into the same wound and twisted, making Rumplestiltskin howl.  Fortunately, however, she did not open a new wound, which allowed him to regain coherency fast enough to hear Zelena’s response: 

“Oh, I am.  But we’ll get to that, Rumple.  First, I’m going to make _you_ regret your choices.  Bit by bloody bit.” 

Somehow, he did not think that she’d chosen that word by accident, and Rumplestiltskin swallowed.  Zelena’s hand was still tangled in his hair, her lips still close to his face and her body pressing against his own.  He would have given anything to be able to pull away from her, but he couldn’t, and being trapped always brought out the worst in him. 

“I hate to disappoint you, dear, but having to listen to you ramble onwards about it isn’t going to do the trick.” 

“Pain,” Zelena hissed, too angry to even channel a silent desire into the dagger, but her fury still accomplished her goal nicely.  

Agony rocketed through him, a rainbow of brilliant colors flashing before his eyes as every nerve in Rumplestiltskin’s body exploded.  Only the earlier command to stand kept him on his feet.  Even when Rumplestiltskin was completely blind with pain, the curse would make his body, his magic, obey, and it did now.  His body started convulsing within moments; magic was driven by emotion, and his curse interpreted a seething Zelena as one who wanted who wanted him to _hurt_.  So her rage translated into screaming convulsions, muscles shaking and legs that could barely hold him up.  Somewhere in the middle of it, as minutes ticked by and Rumplestiltskin screeched his soul out, Zelena spun him around and shoved him against the side of the cage.  His face crashed into the mesh hard, but he hardly noticed. 

She held him there as his screams turned into sobs and the curse kept lashing at him.  The pressure built and built, magic ripping and tearing at the man buried beneath the Dark One, agony digging into his bones, tissue, and muscles, making even those ache.  He had no control over his body, barely any awareness of where he was or what was happening aside from the agony.  Tremors started racing through him, one after another, harder and harder as the pain just continued to build.  It had never been like this before, never so bad, not even a few minutes earlier when Zelena had held him on his knees for the same sort of torture.  Rumplestiltskin’s mind was shutting down, pain overcoming every sense, and it _still_ didn’t stop.  Vaguely, he thought he heard Zelena’s trilling laughter coming from behind him, but there was no way to be sure as he choked out racking sobs, barely able to suck in a breath between them as the pressure continued to build. 

His body was pressed against the mesh with his head still pulled back by the hair when Zelena finally allowed the pain to stop, shaking and struggling to breathe through the pain.  Several additional moments passed before Rumplestiltskin could even make out the cage that was a handful of inches from his face; all the while, he continued to spasm.  The tremors just wouldn’t stop; even as the curse’s attack died down, the magic lingered a moment longer, trailing over him and making him tremble. 

“That was seven minutes,” Zelena whispered into his ear, pressing against his back.  “Do you want to try for longer?” 

He tried to shake his head and couldn’t.  Her grip on his hair was still too tight.  Only then did Rumplestiltskin realize that his face was wet with tears. 

“Well?” Zelena demanded, yanking his hair for emphasis and making him grimace. 

How had his hands wound up holding onto the mesh so tightly?  “No,” Rumplestiltskin wheezed, his voice much more quiet than he would have liked it to be. 

She giggled again, her lips right up against his left ear.  Where was the dagger?  Rumplestiltskin couldn’t see it from his angle, and couldn’t move from where he was trapped between Zelena and the front of the cage.  “It’s amazing what this curse will make you do, isn’t it?  I wonder if I could tell it to hurt you _all_ the time, and then tell you to function, anyway?  Would you like that, for the next time we go after my little sister?  Or would you like me to tell you to visit your precious little Belle, and have the curse hurt you if she touches you?  And not let you pull away?” 

Rumplestiltskin shuddered, closing his eyes against the thought of his curse somehow making him endure that.  But he wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t let himself—he wasn’t the terrified spinner any longer; he was the _Dark One_ , and he’d be damned if he’d let Zelena cow him into showing that kind of weakness.  Even if he was terrified, he’d bottle it up inside and hide it in any way he could.  Zelena jerked on his hair again, and a hiss of pain escaped despite his gritted teeth. 

“Would you like that?” she repeated, and when he did not respond immediately, flicked the dagger until a jolt of pain made him cry out and convulse.  “Answer me!” 

“No,” he said softly, getting in before the curse could force him to respond.  His body was still trembling from the seven-minute marathon of pain, and Rumplestiltskin had no desire to give the curse another excuse to attack.  His voice was still hoarse from all the screaming.

“Well, then you’d best be a good boy, hm?”  

Finally, Zelena released his hair, shoving Rumplestiltskin’s face into the mess.  The impact hurt and his neck creaked in protest, but it was better than having his neck jerked back like that, and breathing was suddenly just a little bit easier.  The question had been rhetorical, so he could ignore it without any ill effects.  But he was still stuck between her and the cage, still had nowhere to go and no way to fight back.  He could only stand there shaking…and wait. 

“So tell me,” Zelena said conversationally, her tone suddenly pensive.  Her right hand dropped to his shoulder, and then drifted over to the back of his neck, slipping under his hair and then stopping there, her long fingers caressing his skin.  Rumplestiltskin shuddered at her touch, but she continued: “In this…human body of yours, how quickly do your wounds heal?  Wounds other than those caused by the dagger, obviously.  Does your curse take care of them for you?” 

Rumplestiltskin didn’t want to answer that question—out of anything she could have asked, that filled him with dread almost more than anything else could.  But his curse gave him no choice, and the moment he even _thought_ about resisting, pressure started building again, pain ripping into him, so the first word tumbled out: “No.”  He caught his breath with an effort, hating the way his body still shook.  “It doesn’t.” 

There had to be some way to regain control of this situation, but Rumplestiltskin couldn’t see it. 

“Interesting,” Zelena purred now, and he could feel her smile on his back.  “But they can’t kill you, those wounds?” 

“No.”  The ominous turn of this conversation made him swallow again, but he couldn’t _lie_ to her while she had the dagger.  Where there was magic, his curse would keep him alive. Rumplestiltskin knew that even the dreamshade wouldn’t have killed him if Hook had stabbed him in Storybrooke; only outside the town was he mortal. 

“Good.”  Her fingers tightened on his neck.  “I think I like you like this, Rumple.  So handsome, and so…vulnerable.” 

No, he definitely didn’t like where this conversation was going.  In the past, Zelena had been content with using the dagger to hurt him, with forcing him to his knees and relishing her control over him.  Now she seemed to be heading off in a different direction.  Of course, he was fully sane now, the only resident in his own mind, unless one counted the curse he’d shared his soul with for three centuries.  His curse didn’t count, though, and Zelena knew it.  Rumplestiltskin was as sane as he was ever going to be, and apparently she had been waiting for that. 

“If you think—” he started, twisting to look at her.  But neither the motion nor the sentence ever finished; Zelena’s hand on the back of his neck tightened and shoved forward, slamming his face against the mesh and cutting him off. 

“Stay facing that way.  I like you like that,” Zelena said the first words flippantly, but then her tone turned dangerously possessive: “What I _think,_ Rumple, is that I’m going to do whatever I want to you, and you can’t resist me, can you?” 

He wanted to say yes. He _burned_ to say yes, to spin around and rip her heart out, to hold it in his hands and watch the shock color her face while he squeezed the life out of it.  But Rumplestiltskin’s limbs would not listen to his commands.  His body obeyed _her_ commands, now.  His soul was not his own. 

But Zelena noticed his hesitation, and Rumplestiltskin felt the sudden twitch of the dagger right before pain hit him, and the scream exploded out of his chest.  Thankfully, the curse-caused agony only lasted a moment, but it was enough to leave him shaking and panting again.  Zelena did not wait for him to swallow back the pain. 

“Can you?” she repeated ominously, and his curse read her insistence as a repeated command; pressure reared up immediately, the words echoing in his mind and cutting in deeply.  Rumplestiltskin saw white. 

“No.”  The word came out as a raw whisper. 

“Good. I’m glad we’re in agreement, then.”  With a final shove, Zelena stepped back, releasing his neck.  “Take your clothes off.” 

 _“What?”_  

“Do it!”  Pain accompanied the command, and the resulting convulsion almost knocked Rumplestiltskin off his feet.  But he didn’t _care_ , not about this; he’d endure the pain if he had to.  He knew he couldn’t stop her, and yet he had to fight this.  

Submitting to her whims was one thing.  Being used as a tool to threaten others he could deal with.  But this?  _No._ This he would not submit to.  Not while he had any fight left in him.  _Even if I know it’s pointless in the end,_ this _I will fight._   Perhaps it wouldn’t be worth the pain, but Rumplestiltskin knew he wouldn’t ever be able to look himself in the eye again if he didn’t resist that command, didn’t resist what came after.  _Belle._ He needed to think about Belle.  She was his reason for fighting, and if he could just cling to that— 

He’d hesitated long enough that the pressure was already rising like a vicious storm within his mind; when the word came out, it was almost a whimper of pain: “No.” 

Already past seeing, Rumplestiltskin could only feel the dagger move.  He was forced to his knees before he knew what had hit him, already screaming and thrashing, the world entering a flat spin of all-encompassing pain.  Somewhere in there he wound up curled up on his side on the dirty floor, convulsing hard enough that his body came off the floor a few times, crashing back down hard enough to leave bruises.  Rumplestiltskin didn’t notice.  The combination of the agony caused by attempting to resist a command and Zelena’s addition on top of that made his body jerk wildly, and he started sobbing between his screams, unstoppable tears streaming down his face.  

The pressure in his head was too much.  The command echoed and echoed, growing louder and louder in his mind until it drowned out anything else, any conscious thought or desire.  Soon enough, Rumplestiltskin couldn’t even remember why he was fighting, couldn’t contemplate doing so—and yet even when he _would_ have given in, Zelena did not let up.  She probably didn’t know that his curse would punish him as thoroughly as she could, that it _was_ , and Rumplestiltskin’s thrashing was becoming wild.  His screams were now decidedly inhuman, both higher pitched and softer, and a distant part of Rumplestiltskin noted that there was blood streaking down his face along with the tears. 

Finally, Zelena flicked the dagger aside, and left Rumplestiltskin twitching and crying on the floor.  The last command continued to echo in his ears even though Zelena had not spoken in ten minutes, and his hands started to move on their own until Zelena ordered: 

“Get up.” 

Still shaking spastically in pain, Rumplestiltskin found himself on his feet before his sluggish mind had even finished comprehending the words, swaying drunkenly.  But it was a new command, one that the curse could decide was more important than the last one, so the agonizing pressure in his head finally relented, leaving him to notice the blood dripping from his nose and the way his limbs kept spasming sickly.  Was he whimpering? 

“Do I have to repeat myself?” his former student asked primly.  Rumplestiltskin was half facing her now, swaying on his feet, and he could see her gesture meaningfully with the dagger through the tears blurring his vision. 

The curse could, too, and it dug its claws in again, remembering the previous command.  Rumplestiltskin flinched wildly, pain and pressure filling his mind, and he shook his head desperately, unable to even verbalize his acquiescence.  Why had he tried to fight?  He could hardly remember now.  His body was burning, still twitching randomly as his breathing came in small, hiccupping gasps. 

“Is that a no?” Zelena demanded, and a new surge of agony hit even as he tried to answer.  Rumplestiltskin tried to scream, but it hurt too much. 

“I heard you,” he managed to gasp after a moment, shudder after shudder running through his body. 

“Then do it.” 

Her expression was vicious with triumph, but Rumplestiltskin tried not to notice it, tried not to look at her as his hands carried out the command.  Off came his tattered suit jacket, then the slightly better-off vest, followed by the shirt that had blood on its collar from the wound Zelena had inflicted on his collarbone.  The pressure eased as he complied, but he’d already removed his shoes and socks before his hands would stop shaking.  Swallowing hard—the thousand reasons why he didn’t want to do this started to well up the moment his mind started working again—Rumplestiltskin woodenly removed his stained trousers.  He only hesitated a moment after that, but his curse swept into the gap, anyway, and he convulsed, gasping sharply in pain as stars exploded in front of his eyes.  _Belle…_  

The resistance burned out with the next stab of pain; Rumplestiltskin staggered, barely catching himself before he could fall.  His entire body was shaking again, but he got his boxers off before he the curse could attack him once more.  Only then did the pressure of that last command finally leave his mind, only once he was standing naked and trembling in front of Zelena, still reeling from the magic that had ripped at his soul.  He was still breathing hard, struggling to regain control and failing.  His tears had slowed to a trickle but not quite stopped; he swayed slightly as he stood, still dizzy and twitching.  The wound on his neck was burning acidic poison, and Rumplestiltskin knew far worse was to come. 

Zelena stepped close to him again.  “What’s this?”  Her hand came up to his face, touching the blood still dripping out of his nose.  He flinched; the flow had slowed, but blood had already covered his face and gotten in his mouth. 

“My curse…doesn’t appreciate resistance.”  Rumplestiltskin didn’t have the energy to find a way around answering the question.  Pressure rose in his mind when he even contemplated that, and while he could ignore that under normal circumstances and dance around answers with the best of them, now he was too hurt.  Everything was still too raw.  He swayed again, and barely caught himself, another whimper emerging. 

“Doesn’t it?”  Of course she sounded pleased; Zelena smiled, waving a hand to clean the blood away.  Magic tingled against his face, but Rumplestiltskin didn’t bother to move.  Compared to what he was certain she had in mind, this was nothing. 

“Obviously,” he answered tightly, swallowing again as Zelena grabbed his chin, turning his head so she could study his face and make sure all the blood was gone.  He let her do it, didn’t fight her hold, but couldn’t stop the slight tremor that shook him.  Standing there naked in front of Zelena made him feel incredibly vulnerable, even more so than he had the first moment she’d picked up his dagger. 

“Is that why you’re shaking?” Zelena asked in that mocking, childish voice of hers, and Rumplestiltskin felt his temper rise to meet it. 

“Stab me in the heart and find out for yourself,” he snapped, sick and tired of her games. 

“Why would I want to do that when you’re so much _fun_ to play with?” she giggled. 

“I’m not your toy,” Rumplestiltskin snarled, and finally his anger lent him the strength he’d been lacking, pushing some of the exhaustion aside long enough for him to glare. 

“Oh, but you are.  The very best toy.”  Her hand tightened on his chin, gripping his jaw hard enough to hurt, but it was the sudden slash of the dagger that made him scream.  The blade cut into the soft flesh of his abdomen, fire exploding outwards from the wound.  It wasn’t too deep, but surface wound or not, the black and purple tendrils of poison raced outwards from the cut, which stretched from his left hip to the right hand side of his lower rib cage.  A normal knife could cause him pain like a normal person, but this was so much worse.  This was darkness eating his flesh, and he tried to double over, only to be held still by the hand gripping his jaw.  “Stay up.” 

Wheezing and whimpering, Rumplestiltskin had no choice but to comply.  Closing his eyes against the pain didn’t help; that only made him more aware of his own vulnerability, and he snapped them open again, needing to see what Zelena was doing.  Immediately, he almost wished he hadn’t.  The dagger came up again, and as Zelena pushed his chin upwards, it cut into the left side of his collarbone, mirroring the wound on the right side and slicing sink and tissue straight down to the bone, then cutting into the side of his neck for good measure.  

Acid boiled into the wound, making him shriek and convulse.  Instinct made his hands try to come up again in a pointless effort to defend himself, but the curse stopped them with a stab of pain that made his mind turn agonized cartwheels and Rumplestiltskin shudder.  Before he’d managed to recover, he felt the hand leave his chin and move around to the back of his neck, lifting his hair and pushing his chin down towards his chest.  The dagger came down there as well, cutting more carefully but no less painfully.  Stumbling, Rumplestiltskin caught himself on the cage as he sobbed out another scream, feeling the dagger trace down his back, cutting skin from his left shoulder to his right hip. 

“Better,” Zelena said, and there was a note in her voice that he really didn’t like. 

There were only five cuts, but the group of them was enough to make his entire upper body feel like it was on fire.  Glancing down, Rumplestiltskin finally saw the blackened mess emerging from the wound on his abdomen, watching the skin around the bleeding cut turn purple with an infection that grew faster than anything a non-magical weapon could inflict.  His breathing was coming in gasps again, harder and harder.  The feeling of acid boiling through his veins made his chest tight with pain, made breathing hard.  The less logical part of Rumplestiltskin’s mind wondered if that acid had somehow made it into his lungs; the rest of him just _hurt_. 

“I have a present for you, pet.”

 

*********

 

TBC.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The warnings definitely still apply! The Rape warning is for chapter 3, but there's sexually-themed torture in this chapter.

“I have a present for you, pet,” Zelena said.

 “I’m not your—” 

Agony cut him off mid-protest; Zelena sliced the dagger into his left side, scraping it along his ribs and cutting deeply. Howling in pain, Rumplestiltskin spasmed again as the dagger spat poison into his system and blood dribbled down his side. 

“That was for your impertinence,” Zelena told him matter-of-factly, punctuating the sentence with a gesture of the dagger and a wave of pain. That assault hit him hard, making his ears ring from the pressure and his head spin. He staggered again, whimpering and barely hearing her next words: “Behave yourself.” 

Thankfully, neither remark required an answer, and Rumplestiltskin was able to spend a much needed moment gathering himself, struggling to control the shaking of his body—which he knew wasn’t only from pain, much though he hated to admit that—and the agony racing through him. Part of him knew that he should come up with a snarky response, but Zelena was clearly in the mood to dole out punishment for such things, and keeping his mouth shut was just smarter. The sudden surge of adrenaline provided by his anger was already fading, and fear was rising to replace it. Zelena hadn’t had him strip just so she could cut him. 

A sudden puff of green smoke got his attention, and Rumplestiltskin turned his head to see that Zelena hadn’t wasted the moment of silence, either. Now she held something in her free hand, a metal chain of some sort—a prong collar? He had to dig through the memories of his purely cursed self to identify it, though why Gold had known what one was, Rumplestiltskin couldn’t remember. Nor did it matter. He knew enough to make his eyes widen and his breath catch in his throat. 

“You’re not serious.” The words came out before he could stop them, but she only smiled, white teeth flashing between too-red lips. 

“Stay still,” Zelena commanded him unnecessarily, using sliding the collar over his head and immediately nestling it down low, careful not to trap his hair, so that the prongs hit the top parts of the cuts she had made along his neck. Cold metal nestled into burning wounds, and Rumplestiltskin gasped out a cry—only to have it cut off as he started to choke when she jerked the collar tight. A tiny, still-working part of his mind noted that she’d put it on backwards, with the prongs in front and the chain that tightened it in back, but with his air supply cut off, Rumplestiltskin wasn’t thinking much at all.

Instinctually, he stumbled a step backwards, desperate to lessen the pressure and pain in order to _breathe_ , but Zelena’s hand was very close to the back of his neck, and she only jerked harder in response. “I said stay _still_ ,” she snapped, and his body froze. 

Still choking for air, Rumplestiltskin felt his eyes rolling back from pain, too. Those prongs weren’t blunt, he realized; they were roughly cut, not smoothed out at all like they were supposed to be, cutting into skin where he wasn’t already bleeding. Several more moments passed, and his vision started to finally blacken around the edges. Zelena might not have been able to choke the Dark One to death, but his human body would certainly black out without oxygen before too long, and she seemed to realize that in time to finally let him breathe.

His curse still hadn’t let him fall down, so he kept swaying on his feet, gasping for air and coughing against the still tight collar around his neck. It seemed to only loosen so much, with the prongs still digging into wounds and making his eyes water. 

“How do you like your present, Rumple?” Zelena asked brightly, her smile full and vicious. 

“I don’t,” he rasped. 

She jerked it tight again, and he saw stars, sobbing for air. Zelena kept him from breathing for just long enough, again, letting him breathe right before Rumplestiltskin really started to pass out. This time, however, she did not give him time to recover before demanding: 

“Tell me you like it,” she hissed. 

It was a command, and his curse reared up to force the words out of him before he could even think about fighting. Still, he could at least infuse sarcasm into his response; she couldn’t make him _mean_ it. “Oh, I love it,” Rumplestiltskin snarled, surprised by how much speaking hurt with prongs digging into his throat. 

“Good.” She knew it was a lie, but for the moment, Zelena seemed satisfied with having made Rumplestiltskin say the words. “You may not touch that collar, not with magic, not with your hands, not in any way. Understood?” 

Rumplestiltskin’s heart plummeted. “Yes.” 

“Good boy.” A final jerk on the collar—was that a _leash_ attached to it?—made him gasp for air, and then Zelena’s hand moved to the back of his head again, running fingers through his hair. A slight pressure on the collar lingered while she did so; yes, that was a leash, and she still held it. Breathing was hard with how tight the collar was. 

Still, the words made him bristle; Rumplestiltskin was not so far gone that he could fail to notice the particular brand of madness Zelena was wearing today. Now he was a pet, complete with cage and collar, and not being able to fight back against that burned. But—she must have seen his expression shifting back towards anger, because Zelena jerked on the collar again, tearing a strangled cry out of him. It wasn’t just the lack of air that hurt. He could feel blood from the new wounds caused by the prongs trickling downwards, and pressure against the cuts along his neck made by the dagger was hellish. 

“You are not to heal any wounds I give you—from the collar or otherwise—without my permission.” Zelena said next, her voice less playful and far more dangerous. “I want you to _hurt._ Understand?” 

“I understand.” But he shook; how could he not? It was the reference to yet uncaused wounds that worried him, that made a lump rise in his throat and his body tense. Rumplestiltskin couldn’t heal damage done with the dagger, though had he been allowed, he could have eliminated probably half the damage done by the prong collar. But now he’d not be able to heal anything until Zelena told him to, and Rumplestiltskin had a feeling that permission would be a long time in coming. 

_I want you to hurt._ The words sent a shiver down his spine. 

“Oh, you’re frightened,” Zelena cooed, her face moving very close to his again, her lips almost touching his left cheek. When Rumplestiltskin did not respond, she used the leash to yank his head around so that they were practically nose to nose. The resulting noise he made was somewhere between a choke and a cry. “Poor thing.” 

Being mocked for fear was something Rumplestiltskin had once been used to; now it only fueled his temper and made him snarl. But Zelena yanked his head forward before he could snap at her, dragging him into a vicious kiss. Her tongue invaded his mouth immediately, teeth scraping sharply against his lips, and Rumplestiltskin jerked back in surprise. Nothing in any of her commands said he had to submit to _this_. Without even thinking, his hands came up, shoving Zelena back—and earning himself a stab of pain from his curse for his efforts, even though he’d actually managed to push her away. Startled, Zelena stumbled, yanking hard on the leash to keep her balance. 

Rumplestiltskin staggered, choking and seeing stars as the collar dug in. The way the collar cut off his air supply kept him from managing more than a soft cry, no matter how his curse dug at him for his resistance. He convulsed as Zelena caught herself, but his temper was up and darkness wiping through him potently enough to give him temporary strength. It was tempered by the thought of how very much he loved another, but the thought of Zelena _using_ him in such an intensely personal way made him snarl “Get off me.” 

“You don’t appreciate a little comfort?” Zelena asked, her eyes flashing dangerously. A flick of the dagger sent red-hot needles of agony into every pain receptor he possessed, and Rumplestiltskin cried out hoarsely, convulsing again. Shoving him backwards so that his back was against the front of the cage, she continued furiously: “Don’t want me to touch you, _slave_?” 

Another wave of agony kept him from answering, and he heard Zelena laugh through the daze. 

“Too bad you don’t have a choice. But I’ll make you pay for trying.” Without warning, the dagger sliced into his stomach again, and Rumplestiltskin tried to double over, wheezing out a scream. But Zelena shoved his shoulder with the hand holding the dagger, forcing him to straighten. “Turn around.” 

Invisible strings of power pulled at him when he hesitated, and Rumplestiltskin found himself turning to face the front mesh of the cage before he could think about resisting. But at least she wasn’t trying to kiss him again. That had to count for something. 

A hand hit between his shoulder blades and pushed, shoving his chest against the mesh and making Rumplestiltskin wince as the cuts on his stomach made contact with the metal. Biting his lip to stay quiet, he started to turn his head to see what Zelena was up to, but a hard yank on the collar stopped him and made him see stars, choking helplessly. The pressure on his neck relented after he stopped trying to turn his head, so Rumplestiltskin went still. He preferred breathing, after all, and Zelena was bound to win any fight between them. He had to pick his battles carefully, else he’d not be fighting any battles at all. 

He was an expert at the long game, but the long game had never been so personal before, and he was _still_ shaking slightly, despite his best efforts to bury his fear under fury. 

“Put your hands behind your back,” Zelena ordered, and Rumplestiltskin sensed magic, feeling as much as hearing the puff of smoke that appeared behind him, depositing something in the Witch’s free hand. Reluctantly, he moved his hands before his curse could do it for him, feeling his left shoulder burn in response to the movement. 

Of course. The cut from the dagger there was still dripping blood, still depositing acid into his system. Moving it like this was more than a little uncomfortable, but letting his curse do the work would only hurt more, so he shifted his hands to behind his back, trying to bend his elbows more than his shoulders so that the cut didn’t shift too badly. The effort proved worthless, however, when magic grabbed ahold of both of his wrists and _tugged_ , and a moment later, a cold metal shackle closed around his right wrist. Rumplestiltskin pulled in a quick breath as his entire body tensed, but he couldn’t fight this no matter how much he wanted to. Her commands penned him in too neatly. 

But apparently binding him with those commands was not enough, because the second shackle closed around his left wrist, and he felt Zelena’s hands on his arms—and hissed when she let the dagger’s point prick into his back, either accidentally or not so inadvertently.   His reaction only made her laugh softly and pull his arms back further so that his elbows bent parallel to the floor and his wrists were stacked on top of one another, right over left. Sudden heat flared, and Rumplestiltskin quickly pulled his arms away from his back as far as he could to avoid being burned as magic seared he shackles to one another, trapping his arms behind his back. He doubted there was a key hole. Magic had bound him, and only magic would unbind him. 

“You’re not to remove these. Or to even _think_ about touching them with magic. Understood?” 

He’d been hoping, without any real expectation of it happening, that she’d forget to say that. “Yes,” Rumplestiltskin hissed, feeling the tension in his shoulders starting to cause cramps already. 

Zelena didn’t answer, but suddenly there was a tug on the collar, making Rumplestiltskin choke as she pulled the leash downwards—and then he felt it attach to the upper shackle, forcing his arms _upwards_. It turned a merely uncomfortable position into an immediate strain on his arms, forcing his elbows to bend more tightly and pulling his wrists up. Breathing was hard but not impossible if he kept his arms in that position, but the burn on his neck was almost unbearable as the prongs dug in to keep the collar in place. Coughing for air, Rumplestiltskin felt a pained sound emerge as he struggled to find a balance between his arms wanting to pull down and the collar trying to choke him when they did, watching the room spin wildly as his restricted air supply made him dizzy. After a moment, a bit of the pressure relented, and he realized that Zelena had lengthened the amount of leash between the collar and the shackles, allowing him to breathe more easily. 

“Don’t make me regret that little kindness,” she hissed dangerously, spinning him around until his back crashed into the mesh. 

The impact made him wince again, but Rumplestiltskin had no intention of responding and was momentarily glad when she did not seem to expect an answer. But his relief faded quickly when Zelena snaked her free hand around the back of his neck, grabbing ahold of the leash that connected his wrists to his neck. A strained noise of pain escaped as he coughed, but her next command still dug in: 

“Now kiss me, _slave_ ,” Zelena ordered, pulling his head forward and crashing her lips into his. 

There was no room for resistance, this time, and nowhere to pull away to. The command burned in, echoing repeatedly in his mind, and Rumplestiltskin let the curse take over, let it open his mouth to accept the intrusion and let his lips respond to her own. He didn’t _want_ this, and his strangled sound of pain from the pressure on the prongs was lost in her mouth, but Rumplestiltskin kissed her anyway, the pressure in his mind forcing him to respond as Zelena slowly sucked on his lower lip. But it didn’t have to be a good kiss, so he gave her the bare minimum he could get away with, trying to think about anything but this, anything but where this might lead. 

Without warning, her left hand, the one holding the dagger, drifted downwards, and suddenly he felt Zelena’s fingers between his legs. Tensing, Rumplestiltskin tried to jerk away from her, but there was nowhere to go with the cage behind his back, and suddenly her nails dug into him, making him cry out. Wide eyed, he stared at Zelena as her fingers played over him, sharp nails scraping against sensitive flesh and making him flinch. Smiling, she dove in for another kiss just as her nails stabbed in once more, making Rumplestiltskin cry out sharply, the noise muffled by the insistent and demanding kiss. 

His hands tugged frantically at the shackles holding him, but there was no give in the heavy metal, and all Rumplestiltskin managed to do was make himself choke painfully. But he hardly noticed that, not with her hand squeezing tight and the hilt of the dagger itself pressing into him. Another pained cry choked out of him before he managed to find his voice, starting desperately: “Zelena—” 

She was not going to do this. No. She wouldn’t—but she _smiled,_ and it was a hungry expression _._ Her blue eyes were wide with false innocence, and she oh so was drunk on power. 

“Yes, Rumple?” 

“You’re not—” 

Nails dug in again, cutting him off and making him sob sharply. Had her hand not remained on the collar, he would have doubled over in pain. Rumplestiltskin had never been a terribly sexual being, even before he’d become the Dark One, and he could count the number of women he’d had sex with on one hand, despite how long he’d lived. Since meeting Belle, he’d never been so much as interested in anyone else, and Zelena touching him like this felt like a betrayal of their love, despite the fact that he couldn’t fight back. _He couldn’t fight back._ That knowledge made him shake, feeling her hand on him and having nowhere to go. Rumplestiltskin had never felt more helpless in his life, with panic creeping in and his own curse chaining him as thoroughly as the shackles he wore. Zelena’s smile, however, never wavered; it only turned into a vicious sneer as she watched him tremble. 

“I _was_ going to make this nice for you, but now I have no such plans,” she hissed, and that was genuine madness in her eyes. 

He’d feared this day would come ever since she’d locked him in this cage, but knowing it had arrived only made things worse. 

“Stay still,” Zelena ordered, and Rumplestiltskin felt the curse’s claws dig in even as her nails did the same, and another strangled yelp tore out of him. Then she released him, but before Rumplestiltskin could shudder in relief, Zelena shifted the dagger into her right hand.  Watching her do that made him swallow. He knew she was right handed, though she usually held the dagger in her off hand; nothing good would come of the swap. Her left hand came to rest on his abdomen, right at the bottom edge of his rib cage, and the feeling of acid flared again when she rubbed a thumb nail into the open wound there. 

Rumplestiltskin gasped, but the pain was almost forgotten once the dagger started moving downwards. The panicked plea came out in a whisper: “Don’t.” 

The tip pressed in; Zelena cocked her head as he cried out in pain, a pinprick of blood already pooling around the dagger’s tip. A slight smile played on her lips as she peered at him. 

“Don’t what?” Zelena asked, puckering her lips at him in a look of mocking contrition. “Don’t use my slave as I see fit?” 

There was that word again, the one that infuriated him more than ever because the dagger made it true. Her name came out in a snarl. “Zelena—” 

“Would you prefer to come to me willingly?” she cut him off. 

“ _No._ ” 

“Well then. You get what you deserve.” 

Fury made her words sharp; Zelena had never taken rejection well. Before Rumplestiltskin could say a word, the dagger slashed down, opening a cut as long as he was while he screeched in pain, convulsing wildly. But the earlier command to stay on his feet was still in effect, and all he could do was scream and sob in pain, shaking like a leaf and feeling the acid taste of the dagger tearing through his most sensitive body part. He wanted nothing more than to jerk away, was even more desperate to escape this than he was angry. The pain swept through his body like fire, but Zelena didn’t give him a chance to recover before she brought the dagger down again. A second cut joined the first, directly opposite it and making Rumplestiltskin wail. 

“Much better,” Zelena commented as he shook, still pinned between her and the cage, blood dripping slowly to the floor. 

The pain was excruciating, worse than the other cuts combined. Rumplestiltskin’s chest was heaving madly, each breath half a gasp as he struggled to acclimate to the burning pain, the darkness rushing through his veins. But then Zelena shifted the dagger back into her left hand and her right hand came down on him, caressing now, her touch almost gentle as he screamed. He could barely hear her laughter until she released him, wringing out her hand until magic wiped the blood away. That left him shuddering and shaking, trying to fight back the need to sob. 

He would not let himself break down. He would not let himself go to pieces. Not like this. 

Even though he already was perilously close. 

“We’ll save that for later,” Zelena said next, smiling at him. But it was her eyes that worried Rumplestiltskin; they were still vicious and vengeful. She had not forgotten the vehemence in his refusal to come to her _willingly_ , and for a moment Rumplestiltskin almost wished he had pretended to want her. Maybe then he could have wrung some sort of advantage out of the situation, but after what she’d already done, he just couldn’t bring himself to do so. But there had always been precious little of his soul leftover when his curse was through with him, and what little of it remained was _his._ Even Rumplestiltskin couldn’t sacrifice his own soul like that. 

But because he couldn’t, Zelena’s temper was riding high, and he could see from the gleam in her too-white eyes that she was going to hurt him for it. Still, he would prefer pain than to betraying his love for Belle like that, would rather— 

“Turn around,” the Witch ordered, moving a half step back to give him room. She was still uncomfortably close, but there was space enough for him to turn and face the front of the cage again. 

He would have been a heap on the floor if his curse hadn’t still been forcing him to remain on his feet; moving was agony and he shuffled around without wanting to. Rumplestiltskin hated turning his back on her, hated not being able to see what was coming. Fear welled up in him, and much though he tried to quash it, the jittery, terrified feeling remained in the pit of his stomach. But he had no choice but to stand with his back to her, arms still bound behind his back, up to his neck, and utterly unable to defend himself. Rumplestiltskin could only swallow, hoping against hope that he was hiding his fear better than he thought he was. 

He wasn’t. 

“Spread your legs,” Zelena whispered, her lips against his ear and her body pressing against his back once more. Rumplestiltskin flinched, wanting to shrink away from her and unable to. Then her words sank in, the curse digging its claws in and ripping into his mind even as he gasped: 

“What?” 

Zelena’s free hand snaked up to grab ahold of the collar and yank hard, making him gurgle in pain and see stars. “You’re going to learn a valuable lesson today, _slave_. One that will stick with you, if you’re smart enough,” she snarled. “I’m going to do what I want with you, and the _only_ choice you’ll get is how much it’s going to hurt.” 

Despite himself, Rumplestiltskin trembled. She’d always been unstable, Zelena, but now… Tellingly, Zelena wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t playful. She was just angry, and wanted to hurt someone. 

_I’m the only one that is going to do the hurting around here_ , she’d told him not too long ago. Why had he assumed that would be limited to just causing him pain via his curse? Now he had no idea what she was going to do, and Rumplestiltskin was starting to shake harder. He hated feeling helpless. Hated being afraid. 

“So, are you going to behave yourself, _dearie,_ or do I have to really hurt you?” she demanded. “You’re either going to accept that you’re my slave, and that I will _do as I like_ with you, or you’re going to wind up living the rest of your life in excruciating pain. Pick one.” 

“I’ll”—he hated the way his voice cracked, hated how broken it sounded—“behave.” 

“Wise of you. If you change your mind, I can always do this with the dagger instead.” The threat hung heavily in her words, and Rumplestiltskin didn’t want to know what she was referring to—even though he knew that he was about to find out. “Obey my command,” Zelena ordered next, and the curse ripped into him hard enough to make him scream. 

His legs spread almost on their own, shaking. Only then did the pressure lessen. 

“Good boy.” A hand stroked his hair, and Rumplestiltskin flinched. His head was spinning, aching, and any contact at all with it made it feel like a hammer was beating into his brain. Then the dagger touched his back, not cutting yet, but resting there as Zelena’s left hand nestled into the small of his back. “Now. Stay standing.” 

Rumplestiltskin felt magic again, heard wood crack and break, and managed to turn his head far enough to see Zelena now holding a leg off of one of the two wooden stools in the room. The rest of the stool lay discarded on the floor, broken and useless. His breath caught in his throat, and the question came out very quietly, nervously: “What are you doing?” 

The leg of the stool would make a poor club, too thin and too short for a good handhold. But Zelena was angry, not smart, so Rumplestiltskin figured— 

“I’m going to rape you, Rumplestiltskin,” she answered him frankly, and his heart stopped cold. “And you’re going to take it, like a good little slave. Or I’ll use your dagger.” 

For the first time in forever, he was too stunned for words. Frightened or not, body burning in pain or not, his mind was far too swift to miss what Zelena meant, and yet part of Rumplestiltskin absolutely couldn’t believe that she would do such a thing. Fear drove the next words out. “You’re not—” 

Zelena never gave him the chance to finish, instead shoving the broken end of the wooden rod into him without any preamble. Rumplestiltskin pitched forward helplessly, crashing into the mesh and screeching in pain. He started to convulse the moment that the foreign object tore into his body, a rainbow of colors exploding in front of his eyes and agony twisting his world into a flat spin. His body jerked with each thrust; Zelena seemed intent on forcing the entire thing into him and then pulling it back out again, not caring _what_ tore while she did so. Still screaming, all Rumplestiltskin could do was slump against the mesh and hope it would hold him up. He couldn’t move, couldn’t pull away, couldn’t do _anything_ but wail in pain as Zelena jammed the rod harder and harder into him, yanking it mostly out only to do the same thing over and over again. 

Blood splashed down onto his legs, but Rumplestiltskin never noticed it, sobbing and screaming and crying. Only his curse held him on his feet as he spasmed, tears flooding down his face. Finally, Zelena seemed satisfied with her progress and stopped, leaving an inch or two of the stool leg sticking out of him and the rest pressing painfully into his insides. His body wanted to repel the unwelcome object, but found it in too deep to do so. The wood was rough, too, having splintered inside him and with shards stabbing into sensitive tissue. Rumplestiltskin kept sobbing, his face pressed weakly against the mesh front of the cage, whimpers racking his body as he shook. Long moments passed in silence, filled only by his broken crying. Nothing in his life had ever hurt like this, have ever made him feel so utterly helpless and used. 

Zelena patted the wood where it stuck out, and he screamed. 

“We’ll leave that there until the lesson sticks.” 

It took a moment for those words to work their way past the fog of agony in his mind, but when they did, Rumplestiltskin went rigid in fear. The whisper came out desperate and hoarse: “You can’t…” 

“I can.” Zelena patted the wood again, and he wailed, convulsing into the mesh. “And I _will._ ” 

A moment passed, and then Zelena started tapping her fingers against bottom of the stool leg, drumming out a rhythm only she could hear. She never hit the wood hard, but she never had to; each impact made him twitch in agony. Sobs exploded out of him, his body jerking helplessly as tears streamed down his face. She said something else, but Rumplestiltskin couldn’t make sense of the words until Zelena’s hand finally came to rest, palm flat against the wood as he trembled. Several long seconds passed before his sobbing calmed enough to hear her. 

“After all, it won’t kill you, will it?” she asked, and Rumplestiltskin could feel the tug of magic forcing him to answer her. 

“No,” he whispered, wishing he could say yes, wishing that his body _wouldn’t_ survive whatever she did to him, and that he wouldn’t have to live with the way he could feel splinters of broken wood stabbing into him, could feel blood coating the insides of his thighs. He was shaking spastically, desperate for her to pull it out or for at least her hand to _move_. He’d never felt more helpless than he did now, standing there with his arms bound behind him and with no choice but to accept whatever she chose to do to him. 

“Then you’ll just have to live with it,” Zelena hissed, her anger coming back. This time her hand hit the wood harder, and his response was a strangled cry. “This will stay as a _reminder_ that you belong to me until you learn your lesson.” 

She didn’t just want the obedience that the dagger could force, Rumplestiltskin realized sickly. Zelena wanted unthinking servitude, wanted him broken in pieces at her feet. He’d never managed to resist her much—a few minutes’ agonizing delay was the most he’d ever been able to buy himself by fighting his curse—but she wanted him too shattered to try. And if she kept up like this… Rumplestiltskin wasn’t certain that he wouldn’t give in. He could have faced the pain better if he’d been able to fight back. Having his curse force him to submit was terrifying. Particularly when he had to submit to _this._  

When he didn’t answer, Zelena finally whirled away from him, leaving Rumplestiltskin leaning heavily against the front of the cage and still whimpering with each breath he took. His insides were burning; the rod was big enough that it stretched and tore him, and he felt so _violated_. And now she was going to leave it there, leave it dug up inside him so deeply that just breathing hurt. _I can’t…_ Rumplestiltskin didn’t know how to cope with this, didn’t know how to be strong when he couldn’t fight back, when the situation was so far out of his control. He’d never known how to be strong while defenseless, and he wanted nothing more than to curl up and cry the pain away. 

“I’ll leave you to think,” she told him, and fear made Rumplestiltskin’s throat seize up. She was going to leave him like _this_? “Feel free to move around as you like. Or sit down. But you’re not to lie down.” 

“What?” Shock and fear tore the word out of him—he didn’t even want to _think_ about sitting down on this—but Zelena must have read his expression, and she suddenly lit up as if seized by a grand idea. 

“In fact, let’s do that. Come here.” 

Pressure rose immediately as the command sank its claws in, and Rumplestiltskin stumbled to her. The first step made him whimper, and the second gasp out a short cry. Moving made the rod shift inside him, and suddenly harder tears blurred his vision. They’d slowed to a trickle before, but now the flood was back, tremors of pain tearing through his body as he lurched the necessary four steps to reach where Zelena stood, his chest heaving from the exertion. He’d never known walking could hurt so much, could make him shake so hard. It almost felt like each step had made the stool leg slip down a little, that his body was trying to push it out. 

Zelena, unfortunately, noticed that. “What’s this?” she asked as he stopped in front of her, wide-eyed and trembling. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to expect an answer, because when her fingers tapped the wood experimentally, Rumplestiltskin moaned in pain. “Oh, we can’t have that.” 

Terror made him miss a breath, made air stick in his throat and his stomach roll. He had no idea what she planned on doing, but apparently the wooden rod _had_ slipped out a bit, which probably explained why there felt to be a little less pressure on his innards. Looking at the sudden smile on Zelena’s face only made him shake harder. She wouldn’t grin like that if she didn’t have an idea, and the tips of her fingers were still resting on the wood where it stuck out of him. 

“I want you,” she said very precisely, clearly weighing each word, “to make this”—she tapped it again, and he let out a strangled cry, convulsing and almost falling before his curse caught him—“wider. Make the diameter grow by...one inch.” 

He started to twist to stare at her in horror, but the command was specific, and Zelena’s hard _“Now,_ ” hammered it home. 

Rumplestiltskin’s magic obeyed the command as he screeched. The broken-off leg from the stool had been a bit over two inches in diameter before, but the increase took it from painful to unbearable. Skin tore as his body jerked, and Rumplestiltskin couldn’t see through the pain. Somehow, his legs stayed under his body, the curse keeping him upright as he sobbed and screeched. Several moments passed before his vision cleared, before he could even _think_ around his own whimpers. Tremors kept tearing through his lower body; Rumplestiltskin felt like the wooden rod was going to split him in half. 

When he could see again, he discovered that Zelena had fetched the other stool and put it on the floor next to him. He was still spasming in pain, but the fog was starting to lift a little. The dagger easily communicated Zelena’s desire for him to remain coherent, for him to _pay attention_ , and that kept Rumplestiltskin from losing himself in the agony. Then Zelena’s right hand came up to touch his face, making him flinch. But there was no way to escape as her fingers ghosted over his left cheek, brushing tears away almost tenderly. Rumplestiltskin wished he could pull away. 

“Does that hurt?” Zelena asked, her voice full of insincere concern. 

“Of course it does,” Rumplestiltskin whispered breathlessly, managing to throw her a half-hearted glare. He was terrified, but had to fight back somehow. 

But the moment the words came out, he knew he shouldn’t have. Zelena’s face went red with fury, her eyes going wide and her lips peeling back into a snarl. Her posture rigid, the Witch studied him for a quick moment before gesturing forcefully at the stool with the dagger. 

“Sit.” 

Rumplestiltskin sat before he could voice a protest, sat on the knee-high wooden stool despite the wooden rod still sticking out of him. It made contact with the stool before he could, his weight descending upon it and making him screech, long and loud. A wild convulsion tore through his body, but his curse kept him from collapsing; Zelena had said _sit_ , so sit his body would. But weight on the rod only pushed it _up_ , and Rumplestiltskin wailed helplessly as it tore deeper and deeper into him. His convulsions only seemed to force it in further, providing the impetus for it to dig in deeper and deeper. Rumplestiltskin’s mind folded under in pain, and he hardly heard the broken whimpers starting to intersperse themselves amongst his screams. 

He didn’t know how long it took before the rod made it all the way into him, pushing until it could go no further and barely half an inch remained outside. The splintered wood was pressed hard into his innards by then, unable to go any further without a greater force than his own slight weight to push it in, so Rumplestiltskin was left sobbing and wailing on the stool, trying half-consciously to shift in a way that might take his weight off of it. There wasn’t one. 

Slowly, his screams tapered off into broken cries, and the convulsions quieted into uncontrollable shaking and twitching. Even his tears eventually slowed to a trickle, his body rocking back and forth slightly in pain. Rumplestiltskin was barely coherent enough to notice that he was whimpering with every breath he took, half hunched over (hard to do with the way his arms were attached to his neck) and just _shaking._ By the time he realized Zelena was gone—long after she’d walked out—the command of _Stay_ had already registered with his curse, and there was nothing he could do save cry and whimper in pain, waiting for her to come back and let it stop.

 

*****************


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the warnings!

 

She left him until the next morning, by which point his whimpers were almost inaudible and the pool of blood beneath him was half-dry.  Rumplestiltskin was exhausted and practically incapable of coherent thought, but his curse forced his attention to Zelena when she walked in, magic compelling awareness to push aside the fog of pain.  His entire lower body burned numbly; every breath made him even more aware of the wooden rod stuck inside him, of the splinters poking into shredded internal tissue.  He wanted to cry but was out of tears, floating in pain and so dizzy that he could hardly notice the cage door swinging open. 

A hand stroked his face, and he whimpered. 

“Are you going to be good now?” Zelena asked cheerfully.  “Or do I have to leave you here for another twelve hours?” 

Fear shot through him; Rumplestiltskin froze.  “No,” he whispered brokenly, and then his breath caught as he realized that she might assume he was answering her first question.  “Don’t.” 

He couldn’t imagine staying on that stool any longer; the long night on it had been hell, and he _still_ felt like the rod was going to rip him in half.  Rumplestiltskin hadn’t stopped his sick shaking since Zelena had forced him to sit down, and he could barely think of anything other than the pain. 

Zelena’s hand found the back of the collar, and yanked.  Rumplestiltskin wheezed out a louder whimper.  “Then are you going to be good?” 

“…Yes.”  He hated himself for saying it, but fighting back only meant he’d be hurt more.

“Good.”  Her hand returned to his cheek, making Rumplestiltskin flinch.  “Let’s test that, shall we?” 

A tremor ran through him, and all Rumplestiltskin could do was close his eyes, glad the question was rhetorical.  He didn’t want to know what she had in mind, didn’t know if he could take any more of this without shattering completely.  He was so afraid.

“Lengthen your _friend_ here,” she ordered, tapping the dagger against his ass and making him sob in pain before he could object to the crass characterization of the object she’d raped him with, “by two inches” she ordered.  “At the top, not the bottom.  Slowly.” 

Terrified, Rumplestiltskin hesitated, just for a second, and then his curse’s claws dug into him, the pressure of the command rising and rising until he released his magic to do as he was bid.  Millimeter by millimeter, the rod inside him grew, pushing into him far too deeply and ripping a strangled scream out of his chest.  But there wasn’t room enough for it, so even as the rod grew it started pushing out of him.  Somehow, Rumplestiltskin’s body found the strength to convulse a few times, but he was barely able to scream because it hurt so badly.  By the time the rod was finished growing, the top of it was a half inch further into him than ever before, leaving two inches between his ass and the stool.  Rumplestiltskin balanced precariously on the smooth end—it had always been the broken-off one that was inside him—shaking and crying again. 

“Very good,” Zelena said approvingly, and he flinched away as hard as his curse would let him.  It was less than an inch’s worth of movement, but Rumplestiltskin still almost toppled. 

His high-pitched whimper was something inhuman. 

“Now, I have one more test in mind,” she told him, her voice low and dangerous again.  “And you had best pass it if you _ever_ want me to take that out of you.  Understand?” 

Swaying in pain, Rumplestiltskin could only nod dejectedly.  He wanted to fight her, he really did, but Zelena was unstable enough that the threat to leave it in was very real.  He could feel her satisfaction, her pleasure, through the dagger’s connection with him, and it made him feel sick. 

And weak.  So very, very weak. 

“Widen your friend another half inch.” 

“No”—it was a panicked plea, not defiance, but his curse ripped into him, anyway, and Rumplestiltskin sobbed brokenly, convulsing violently.  He couldn’t— _“Please…_ ” 

“Do it!” 

He did.  The resulting convulsion almost threw him off the chair, but he’d been ordered to _stay_ hours earlier.  Keening out a horrible noise as skin tore further, Rumplestiltskin’s world narrowed down to pain and only pain, to the horrible feeling of that wooden rod growing inside him.  He felt like his lower body was going to explode from the pressure, felt like he would split in half at any moment.  He was rocking back and forth again, and even though it made the rod move, made the pain worse, he couldn’t stop himself.  He could only whimper and distantly feel tears trickling slowly down his face, unable to see and unable to hear until Zelena’s silent demand for _coherency_ slammed into him. 

“Get up,” she ordered after making him suffer for a few moments longer, and somehow Rumplestiltskin staggered to his feet, swaying precariously.  

Movement made wood inside him shift, and he moaned out another broken whimper, shaking and breathing hard.  He didn’t want to think about what she was going to do next.  Didn’t want to contemplate that she might not be satisfied.  Rumplestiltskin just wanted to curl up and cry. 

“Look at you.”  Now there was a sneer in Zelena’s voice, disgust.  “You’re filthy.” 

Rumplestiltskin almost asked her whose fault that was, but fear quashed the notion.  The last thing he wanted to do was anger her further, so he just stood quietly, pain still ripping through his body and trying not to move so he couldn’t make it worse.  Abruptly, she grabbed his chin and forced his head around so he had to face her, making Rumplestiltskin lurch, whimpering in agony and barely catching his balance. 

“Now, slave, are you going to fight me, or are you going to do this the less painful way?” Zelena demanded. 

His voice came out tiny, and he had to swallow before he could reply.  “I’ll…do what you want.” 

He didn’t even know what that was, but Rumplestiltskin was hurting too much to fight.  Zelena smiled. 

“Finally.” 

She waved a hand, and suddenly a swirl of green magic surrounded them and pulled.  A second later, they were standing inside the farmhouse, in the master bathroom.  Another flick of Zelena’s wrist followed, and the shackles suddenly fell off his wrists.  They hit the floor with a clank, and gravity pulled his arms down almost immediately, fire shooting through his shoulders as nerves objected and muscles screamed.  Swaying drunkenly in pain, Rumplestiltskin could only whimper, and then flinch away as Zelena reached up to remove the leash from the collar—but the prong collar stayed on and tight.  Even slight contact with it made him wheeze for air. 

“You’re not to try to remove the collar.  Or your friend,” she told him, reaching down to tap the wooden rod and make him sob, staggering.  “Do you understand?” 

“Yes,” he whispered, shaking harder as feeling raced into his numb limbs.  Helpfully, Zelena pulled his arms to his sides, and a moan tore out of him. 

“Get in the shower and clean yourself up.  Thoroughly,” Zelena commanded. “Scrub the blood off, including around the collar and your friend.  I don’t care how much it hurts—you won’t fall, and you won’t stop until you’re clean.  Nor will you use magic.” 

She seemed to be waiting for an answer, so Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes and nodded, glad, at least, that it would get him away from her for a few minutes.  At least Zelena didn’t seem inclined to do the scrubbing herself—he was pretty sure having her touching him like that would have utterly shattered him.  

A gesture with the dagger sent him reeling towards the shower, stumbling exhaustedly and almost slipping when he tried to get in.  But he managed, even though he found quickly that the warm water offered no relief.  The spray hit his open wounds like a thousand tiny needles, making him gasp and whimper while his hands robotically obeyed Zelena’s orders, washing away the blood and the grime from that cellar cage.  Rumplestiltskin tried to detach his mind from the process, struggling to think of anything but how it felt like every cut on his body was reopening.  Most of the wounds had stopped bleeding, at least; although his curse would not heal him automatically the way it would in the Enchanted Forest, he was still the Dark One, and that infernal curse would keep him from bleeding out.  The wounds hadn’t closed so much as they had slightly scabbed over, but several started bleeding again once soap made contact with them. 

By the time he was halfway done, Rumplestiltskin was whimpering again and wobbling dangerously.  Even a slight movement felt like it shoved the wooden rod in deeper, and cleaning the open wounds around it almost sent him to his knees as he cried out in pain.  Zelena had left the bathroom—a tiny mercy—but he was certain that she was listening, and probably enjoying every moment of this.  Momentary fury welled up at that thought, lending him focus for the first time in hours, but Rumplestiltskin found his mind skittering away from the thought of resistance.  Every time he moved, the wooden rod jammed into him, reminding him of the _lesson_ Zelena had imparted.  No doubt that was her intention, and it was an effective method. 

Finally, Rumplestiltskin stepped out of the shower and cautiously toweled himself dry, wishing that being clean had made him feel even vaguely human again.  But it hadn’t, and by the time he was finished, Zelena was back, dagger in hand. 

Swallowing hard, he let her yank the towel away from him, trying to stop his hands from shaking and unable to do so.  Standing naked in front of her made him feel terribly helpless and utterly vulnerable.  A minute or two ticked by while Zelena just studied him, cocking her head with a satisfied little smirk playing across her lips.  Watching her look at him that way, like he was her property, made rage rise up to do battle against the fear that knocked his heart against his ribcage, and Rumplestiltskin demanded: 

“What now?”  But his voice shook; it was hard not to, with the burning pain of that damn wooden rod still reminding him of its existence every time he so much as breathed. 

A flick of the dagger brought him to his knees, with his curse’s claws rending and tearing into him.  Unable to scream, Rumplestiltskin doubled over, convulsing helplessly as Zelena held him under for a minute, and then two.  After the third passed, she flicked the dagger aside, leaving him panting and whimpering again.  

“Have you forgotten your manners already?” Zelena snarled, flicking another wave of pain at him for good measure. 

Rumplestiltskin sobbed, his head spinning.  “No.” 

“I’m not sure you haven’t,” she hissed, stepping close to him and grabbing him by the hair to force him to lean back—but her grip held his head so that he was forced to sit on his knees, and when she pushed him further back, the end of the rod bounced off the floor. 

Seeing white, any attempt to answer was drowned in a breathless cry of agony. 

“Shall we make that friend of yours wider again?” Zelena wondered conversationally; Rumplestiltskin’s heart hammered to a stop.  Then her foot slid between his legs and kicked, hitting the rod and finally making him scream softly. 

“Don’t,” he whispered when he’d caught his breath, hating himself for pleading but unable to stop. His whole body was trembling again, and he knew he was going to pieces. 

“Then you’ll have to behave yourself like a proper slave.  Won’t you?” 

Closing his eyes, despising himself more than ever, Rumplestiltskin nodded slightly.  Brokenly.  “Yes.” 

Her laugh drifted down to him.  “Get up.” 

Standing was better than being on his knees, so Rumplestiltskin was more than willing to comply, even if doing so did make the rod shift inside him and him, and he shuddered wildly as its sharper edges bumped against something tender, gasping raggedly.  Still, he made it to his feet, standing tensely less than two feet away from Zelena, who had started playing with the dagger, tapping her nails against the blade.  Red-hot needles of pain buried themselves under his skin every time a sharp nail bounced off the metal, making Rumplestiltskin twitch.  A low moan sounded deep in his throat; everything hurt, and he knew that she wasn’t going to let up. 

“Come along,” Zelena said suddenly, turning and leaving the bathroom, confident that his curse would make him follow. 

It did.  Walking more than a few steps was hell, and after the second one Rumplestiltskin was whimpering again, helpless as the rod shifted inside him each time he moved one leg or the other.  He was almost convulsing by the time they reached a bedroom, shaking and shuddering uncontrollably.  Through it all, however, the heartbreaking thought wouldn’t go away: _What if she leaves it in?_  

Almost as if she could read his mind, Zelena stopped and turned to study him as he stumbled into the room after her.  “You’re going to have to learn to walk better than that.”  

Rumplestiltskin froze. 

“Still.  That will keep.”  Zelena gestured airily with the dagger.  “Turn around.” 

Swallowing, he did so, unable to stop from cringing and closing his eyes as he waited to see what she would do.  But his eyes flew open quickly enough when a touch of magic entered the air—knowing was better than not knowing, no matter how frightened he was.  Still, Rumplestiltskin flinched away from her touch when metal closed around his left wrist without warning.  For some reason, he’d assumed— 

Another shackle closed around his right wrist, and then his wrists were pulled together, side by side this time without his arms being bent.  Heat flared again, and the shackles welded to one another, pulling his shoulders back uncomfortably.  This was better than the previous position, but not by much.  Nervously, Rumplestiltskin started to look back over his left shoulder, needing to know what Zelena was doing, and surprisingly, she didn’t stop him.  Another puff of green smoke later, and Zelena held a short chain in her hands, one far too short to connect these shackles to the prong collar, no matter how much she forced his arms to bend. 

“Spread your legs,” she said curtly, fooling with the chain idly.  When she saw his worried expression, Zelena only smiled.  “Now, _slave._ ” 

Shaking, Rumplestiltskin complied, already feeling his curse pulling at him, forcing him to place his ankles further apart than he would have liked to.  Balancing like that was difficult, and he felt the wooden rod shift slightly inside him, which made an uneven moan emerge.  His eyes squeezed shut again on their own, this time in pain.  Breathing harder and harder, Rumplestiltskin could only wait to see what she was going to do—and then cried out sharply as Zelena touched the end of the rod. 

He heard the chain clink, and then suddenly there was a _tug_ on the rod that almost sent him sprawling forward.  Somehow he caught himself, the curse moving his limbs for him when Rumplestiltskin’s motor control failed, but when his wrists were suddenly pulled down, paralyzing agony finally won out, and Rumplestiltskin collapsed to his knees, spasming out a scream.  But the convulsion made his limbs move, and now that chain connected his wrists to the wooden rod, forcing him to arch his back or pull on it.  Frantically, screaming weakly, he tried to find a position that didn’t pull on the rod, but the chain was just too tight and he couldn’t bend enough. 

Zelena pulled him back to his feet by the wrists, and he wailed softly in pain, seeing stars. 

 _“Stand._ ” 

It took a moment for the command to sink in; for several seconds, the pain was just too much.  Finally, however, his curse and exhaustion won out, and Rumplestiltskin managed to catch his balance despite the agonizing pressure from the new angle the wooden rod was at.  The broken top of it had pushed forward inside him—and he couldn’t shift his arms enough to mitigate that—making wild tremors tear through his body one after another after another.  He heard Zelena make a satisfied sound as he whimpered, and then her hand grabbed the back of his neck without any warning, pulling his face towards hers. 

Rumplestiltskin did not fight as she kissed him hungrily; he just closed his eyes and tried to shrink into himself, wishing he could block out her presence entirely.  Zelena sucked his lower lip for a moment as he stood shaking, and then his eyes snapped open as a sudden wave of pain rolled over him.  Vision swimming, he opened his eyes to stare at her blearily, this pain stacking on top of everything else to make it hurt too much to even cry out.  He’d never known anything could hurt this much, never imagined that his curse could be used to destroy him like this, to force him into utterly terrified compliance.  Zelena, however, did not give him time to even start to figure out what she’d been punishing him for this time. 

Instead, she shoved him roughly, and Rumplestiltskin stumbled backwards a few steps before he could stop himself, whimpering softly as movement made the rod shift.  A harder tremor shook him, and he almost fell.  Another push forced him back another three steps until the back of his calves bounced against the bed, tension tearing through him.  She wasn’t— 

“Lie down on your back,” Zelena ordered, gesturing at the bed with the dagger. 

Terror welled up in him, heavy and despairing.  Rumplestiltskin remembered her hands on him the day before, remembered her asking _Would you prefer to come to me willingly?_   He’d told her no, and still meant that—the thought of her touching him was almost enough to make him completely break down.  But this was her point, wasn’t it?  The lesson she wanted to drive home.  The dagger made him her slave, and there was nothing he could do to defend himself.  Even against this. 

Obeying her command before his curse could tear into him, Rumplestiltskin tried to lower himself carefully onto the bed, desperate to avoid sitting on the end of the rod.  But doing so was hard with his hands behind his back, and the rod scraped against the covers as he moved, making Rumplestiltskin whimper sickly and another set of weak convulsions shake his body.  He couldn’t stop trembling, even once he was flat on his back on the bed, arms twisted awkwardly behind his back and struggling to keep his hands low enough that the shackles did not pull on the rod any harder than they already were.  Zelena joined him immediately, her free hand brushing hair out of his eyes in an almost tender fashion that made him look away while she giggled. 

There was that mad look in her eyes again, the one that told him she was drunk on power and there was no stopping her.  “Don’t do this,” he whispered softly, despite that knowledge. 

“Don’t what?” Zelena asked with exaggerated innocence, grabbing his chin and forcing him to face her again.  The dagger came to rest on the side of his face, the flat of the blade pressing into his cheek as Rumplestiltskin shook.  She smiled, flicking the dagger and sending a burst of agony echoing through his skull.  “You’re my slave, Rumple.  I’ll do with you as I want, and you _will_ submitto me.” 

Instinctive resistance reared up, ever so slightly—and his curse quashed it under a wave of excruciating pressure.  A small whimper escaped him, but it was as much from despair as pain.   Too spent for defiance, he looked away and refused to watch as Zelena disrobed, never once letting go of the dagger and then settling herself down on the bed next to him once more.  Focusing on an ugly painting on the far wall let him think he could ignore her when one hand dipped between his legs, but the sudden searing pain from her touch made him gasp. 

Rumplestiltskin had almost forgotten about those cuts amongst everything else she’d done, but now they roared back into the forefront of his consciousness.  Every touch sent the echo of acidic darkness shooting through his system, made whimpers rise up that he was unable to stop.  Tears of both pain and shame filled his eyes, and the only thing he could take even the smallest solace in was the fact that Zelena had to use magic to get him hard.  It made her hiss in frustration and dig nails in to make him sob, but Rumplestiltskin didn’t _like_ pain, and this hurt too much.  There was no way she could excite him without using magic, a fact that seemed to frustrate Zelena. 

It hurt like hell as her hands started moving over him, pressing and caressing in a mockery of a lover’s touch.  He could feel her magic washing over him, forcing his body to react as if this pain were pleasure, and Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes in shame, feeling his breathing coming harder and harder.  He knew it was just a physiological reaction, knew that he had no choice, but the fact that she could make his body react like this was still humiliating. 

“Isn’t that nicer?” Zelena whispered to him, running her nails lightly along his length as he whimpered in pain.  Ignite the pleasure centers in his body and his brain though she could do, Zelena had done nothing to dull the pain, and an erection only made him that much more sensitive to the ragged cuts she’d carved into him the day before.  Her nails dug in.  “Answer me.” 

“No,” he sobbed. 

“No?  Some parts of you seem to disagree.”  He could hear her smile, and opened his eyes to glare at her shakily, hating the way she loomed over him with her hands still on him.  Before he could answer, Zelena leaned over to brush another kiss against his lips, and Rumplestiltskin turned away, only to have a hand wrap around the back of his head and yank his face back to meet hers.  “Kiss me.” 

The snarled words were an order, and he could feel Zelena’s possessive arousal through the dagger, could feel it fueling him, commanding him into a hungry and passionate kiss.  When he could finally pull away, Rumplestiltskin shuddered, and not only because her hand drifted back down to stroke him once more.  He whimpered again, the confused mixture of pleasure and pain making his body shake violently.  Instinct made his hands try to come up to stop her, but moving them pulled on the rod, and Rumplestiltskin tried to scream in pain when it shifted. 

“Some part of you must like pain, Rumple,” Zelena grinned.  “Look how excited you are.” 

He just shook his head frantically, tremors racing through him as Zelena’s fingers kept moving, squeezing, stroking.  Desperate to escape her touch, he tried to shift his hips and squirm free of her hand, but the dagger tapped his genitals when he tried.  

“Stay still, or I’ll start cutting again.” 

Rumplestiltskin froze and let her kiss him again, closing his eyes to avoid looking at her as she did so.  Slowly, almost sensually, Zelena’s hand continued to move over him, and even as he moaned in pain Rumplestiltskin felt his hips moving in response—until that shifted the rod inside him and he sobbed sharply in pain.  She only laughed, and the merry sound made him shake harder as Zelena finally straddled his hips.  He let out a horribly soft cry of pain as she settled onto him, every cut burning. 

 He just turned his head away as Zelena raped him, tried to focus on the pain and not on the crippling helplessness, the horrible feeling of being _used_ , on the way she could force his body to respond to him, his breathing to get hard and his hips to move with her.  But concentrating on the pain didn’t help, particularly when Zelena tapped the dagger viciously to force him to jerk underneath her and try to scream.  Her movements made it hard to keep his arms and lower body still, which only pulled on the rod inside him, and soon enough Rumplestiltskin was crying brokenly amidst agonized whimpers.  Every time he tried to scream the sound died in his chest; he was hurting too badly to manage.  He didn’t have energy to waste on screaming, not any more. 

“Kiss me,” Zelena ordered partway through, and he complied emptily, mechanically, still not looking at her.  A gnawing hollowness was growing inside him, the hopeless realization that for all his legendary cleverness, he was truly defenseless.  His power was chained, meaningless.  If Zelena wanted to use him as a toy, he couldn’t stop her. 

He kept crying when she finished with him, tears still rolling down his face when she waved a hand and sent him back to his cage.  Still bound, Rumplestiltskin couldn’t curl up very well, but he tried, pulling his knees towards his chest as he lay on the filthy floor, shaking and violated. 

*****************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Zelena has a task for Rumplestiltskin.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelena sends Rumplestiltskin off to do a few odd jobs. Oh, and she hurts him, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL warnings still apply! This is not a nice story.

Zelena kept him bound like that for the next four days, leaving that horrible rod in and bringing Rumplestiltskin to her bed every night.  Each day she experimented with other ways to hurt him: caning him until his back and thighs were covered in bloody welts, using a cattle prod to shocking him, or finding a dozen other ways in which to drive home the lesson that he was utterly helpless.  Five days after she’d first forced him to strip—his tattered suit still lay in the corner—the point had been made very thoroughly.  Rumplestiltskin was a mess. 

He’d spent the previous night on that damn stool again, though this time Zelena had bound both his ankles down to its legs and his hands down to the seat.  Something inside him had torn during the night, and the rod was now further in him than ever before.  Rumplestiltskin had actually blacked out from the pressure, from the pain, but when he’d come to he’d still been shackled in place, shaking and bleeding and trying to scream.  He’d grown noisy enough that Zelena just gagged him with a cylindrical metal bar that dug deep into his throat and jammed his jaw open, holding it in place with a wide strip of leather that covered his face from nose to chin.  It was heavy and it hurt, and breathing around the gag was extremely difficult.  

Of course, she’d laughed when he choked on it, and told Rumplestiltskin that the gag would remain in place until he learned to accept his _punishments_ quietly and obediently, and then left him for the night, sitting on top of the rod and feeling himself bleeding. 

She’d forced him to widen it a little the previous afternoon, after she’d returned from some encounter with Regina that hadn’t gone entirely according to plan.  Frustrated and angry, Zelena had taken her fury out on Rumplestiltskin, and then she’d raped him again while he tried to scream in pain.  Interestingly, she hadn’t gone so far yet as to _order_ him to be silent, a command he’d have to follow.  No, Zelena seemed to want to frighten the noises out of him, to mold him using torture and fear alone.  Not that she was above using the dagger for everything else, but he _was_ growing quieter.  Either sheer exhaustion or terror was winning; which didn’t really matter.     

Light intruded, but not much.  It was a gloomy dawn that filled the storm cellar when the trapdoor opened, but Rumplestiltskin only trembled.  Zelena’d always been an early riser, and when the overhead light flicked on, he knew she was back.  He was as frightened as he was numb, but even his shattering mind could associate light with additional torture.  Rumplestiltskin flinched as the cage door opened. 

“Up.” 

The shackles holding him to the stool released, and he lurched to his feet, his soft whimper completely lost behind the gag.  Immediately, Zelena stepped forward, her hip brushing his, and Rumplestiltskin shivered helplessly.  She grabbed his chin, tilting his face this way and that as he cowered.  Five days of nonstop pain, of constant torture, had wiped the courage from him.  Trying to fight back one more time had been useless; Zelena had only forced the curse to tear into him for almost a half hour, and Rumplestiltskin’s resistance had shattered.  Now he just wished she’d stop touching him, wished he could pull away.  But he couldn’t. 

“I think it’s time to take your friend out,” she said after studying him for a moment, and fear made Rumplestiltskin stop breathing for a moment.  Oh, he wanted the damn thing out almost more than anything, but he was still smart enough to know that five days after it had been shoved in, his body had somewhat adapted to the intruder.  Pulling it out would only reopen every wound inside him, and he didn’t want to think about how much it would hurt coming out. 

“Don’t you?” she asked, and suddenly the gag was gone, leaving his mouth hanging open and jaw aching.  Slowly, Rumplestiltskin tried to force his mouth to function, working his jaw cautiously—the person holding the dagger had asked him a question, and the pressure started building rapidly when he did not answer right away. 

“Just do whatever you’re going to do,” he whispered brokenly. 

Zelena’s white teeth flashed in the dim light. “Oh, I will.”  

Rumplestiltskin just shuddered. 

“Turn around,” she ordered, gesturing with the dagger.  Rumplestiltskin did so, hating turning his back on her, particularly after the lengthy caning she’d subjected him to the day before.  Sure enough, Zelena’s free hand immediately went to his waist and drifted down, her nails trailing into open wounds and pressing as he whimpered, staggering for balance. 

“I like this look on you, Rumple,” Zelena murmured, sounding very satisfied.  “We’ll have to keep it.”  Suddenly, her nails dug into the bloody mess surrounding the protruding wooden rod, and Rumplestiltskin sobbed out a gasp.  “Won’t we?” 

“As you like,” he answered dully, the words coming around another whimper of pain.  But he was starting to shake harder and harder, so unbalanced that he almost toppled when Zelena’s left hand pushed into his shoulders. 

“Lean forward.”  A soft laugh, and then the dagger nicked his right shoulder, clearly on purpose.  Rumplestiltskin moaned, acid dancing through his veins immediately.  He wished he could scream, that the sound didn’t catch in his throat every time, heavy and suffocating.  But he didn’t have the strength to be so noisy.  Zelena had certainly accomplished that much of her goal.  “You’re going to want to hold on,” she told him nastily.  “But don’t fall.” 

His hands found the mesh on their own, fingers wrapping around it for balance.  Zelena just kicked his ankles further apart as Rumplestiltskin stood shaking, waiting for what he knew was going to come and trying to keep himself from hyperventilating.  This was going to— 

Fingers touched the rod, and Rumplestiltskin squealed in pain, gripping the mesh hard.  Even with the curse to hold him up, his knees wanted to buckle, did every time Zelena touched that thing.  She wiggled it, and he tried to scream, white lights dancing across his suddenly squeezed shut eyes and the sound trapping itself in his chest, emerging as a tormented sob.  He couldn’t take this anymore, couldn’t _handle_ the pain, couldn’t think and couldn’t do anything other than wildly hope that when she took it out she’d leave him alone for a while.  What little of Rumplestiltskin’s intellect remained knew that she _wouldn’t,_ but logic wasn’t working too well at the moment. 

He felt her hand close around the protruding wooden rod—Zelena had a hard time gripping it, as not much stuck out, not anymore—and clung helplessly to the mesh.  He couldn’t stop whimpering, couldn’t— 

Zelena probably had to use magic to start the process of pulling the stool leg out; Rumplestiltskin felt the tingle but barely registered it.  The first tug was almost enough to pull him off his feet.  His knees buckled and the second yank—it was in rather terrifyingly firmly—almost made him black out, pain swirling around him in a giant vortex of power and darkness, egged on by the silent command to _Stay Conscious_ , followed hard on the heels by one to _Stay Coherent_!Both rolled over him and the curse wrapped Rumplestiltskin’s mind up tightly, forcing him to _feel_ every moment, every pull.  The wounds inside him must have started healing, because Zelena had to work to get the rod moving. 

And then something tore, and despite the curse, Rumplestiltskin’s world went black, red, and then black again, tipping off the edge of the proverbial cliff and spiraling downwards towards something like insanity.  Finally, he managed to scream, just once, and it was a sick, cut-off sound that didn’t come out quite right, high pitched and inhuman.  Quiet sobs swallowed it as his body convulsed, his face resting weakly against the mesh cage as Zelena shoved the rod _back_ in once it was halfway out.  Rumplestiltskin wailed, the sound so soft that even he could hardly hear it. 

Finally, she tore the rod out, and Rumplestiltskin slumped weakly, crying and feeling blood streaming down the insides of his legs.  He was certain it was just his imagination, but everything seemed to hurt _more_ with it out, or maybe that was just the feeling of the half-healed wounds inside him having been torn open once more.  Shaking spastically, he flinched when he felt Zelena step close to him again, and when her fingers touched the shredded opening, he tried to scream. 

“Is that better?” she asked, and he could hardly hear her through his tears.  But Rumplestiltskin knew better than to ignore her—much though he wanted to—so he nodded hesitantly.  He didn’t think he had the strength to speak. 

Another pat made him keen out a soft moan.  

“Good.”  He could feel Zelena’s smile as her hand moved up to caress the cuts and welts on his back, making him flinch.  “Because we have work to do.” 

Surprise finally forced the word out of him, slurred and dizzy though it sounded: “…What?” 

“You didn’t think I wouldn’t keep using you, did you?  You’re my slave, _dearie_ , and I have uses for you and your power.  It’s not just your body that’s mine,” Zelena’s voice dropped to a low snarl, and her hand snaked up to the collar, pulling on hit hard until he choked and saw stars.  “So, now you’re going to let that darkness fill you, let it sustain you as you know it can.  You’ll not heal yourself, but you’ll do as I bid, and you’ll do it _well_.  Understood?” 

The full weight of his curse fell behind the commands, and Rumplestiltskin felt it ready to claw and tear at him.  Just knowing it was there made him shudder helplessly, but on the edges of his consciousness he was also aware of the darkness hovering like an old friend, waiting to serve him.  Yes, he _could_ do what she wanted, and the small corner of him that was still Rumplestiltskin sensed a loophole in the rather specific command. 

“I understand,” he whispered, and then flinched as her hand drifted back down to his back, rubbing wounds and making him spasm. 

“Good boy.”  She pressed harder, and he whimpered, stuffing the knowledge of the loophole away into a box where his terror couldn’t get at it.  “Clean yourself up with magic,” Zelena ordered, and then continued as if she was granting him a huge favor: “You may stop the wounds from bleeding if you like, but you’re not to heal one _bit_ of it.” 

Magic swirled around him, suddenly obedient to his commands and he welcomed it like an old friend, letting it roar into his consciousness and do his bidding.  For the first time in days, he felt _alive_ , felt almost like he could think.  Rumplestiltskin couldn’t disobey her, but Zelena had never said anything about not dulling the pain—he didn’t dare do so now, not with her around to notice, but once she was gone, he would.  He’d always been good at finding loopholes, and Zelena was clever, but not nearly so clever as he.  Feeling like a shadow of his former self, he replied: 

“I heard you the first time.”  But his voice was still scratchy, and when her hand drifted downwards to pat him on the ass, Rumplestiltskin flinched wildly.  He hated his own broken whimper. 

“Feeling feistier, _slave_?” Zelena stepped close to him, her voice suddenly dangerous, and with a warning that was impossible to miss.  

“No.”  The word came out on its own, fast and before Rumplestiltskin could even think, a legacy of the last five days of pain.  He was shaking again, harder than before, suddenly so very conscious of the dagger still in her left hand. 

“I think you’re lying.” 

“I can’t—” 

The curse crashed in before he could say more, clawing at his soul and making Rumplestiltskin convulse against the mesh, clinging to it for balance.  He still couldn’t scream, and after the first few seconds, he felt his coherency collapse as his curse twisted and rent his soul, darkness dancing through every corner of his being, even the tiny parts he’d always managed to keep his curse away from.  But he had no such defenses now, and Zelena used his magic to pour pain into him, lighting nerve endings on fire and making his muscles spasm.  Several minutes of agony passed before Zelena called his curse off, and by then Rumplestiltskin was a crying mess once more. 

“Don’t forget how much I can hurt you,” Zelena hissed.  A hard hand on his shoulder forced him to turn around, and Rumplestiltskin slumped against the cage as she pressed the flat of the dagger against his throat.  The wounds on his back burned as he shook, watching her warily and wondering sickly what she would do next. 

Surprisingly, Zelena stepped back, gesturing at the crumbled up suit in the opposite corner of the cage.  “Get dressed.” 

Moving stiffly—it wasn’t as bad with the wooden rod out, but there was still a constant and deep stabbing pain inside him—Rumplestiltskin went over and did as he was bid.  Cloth scraped roughly against his still-open wounds and made the cage spin; he whimpered softly.  His hands were shaking so badly that he could barely button his shirt, and Rumplestiltskin was very glad that he’d lost weight during his time locked in her storm cellar, because it made his trousers looser than they otherwise would have been.  Still, there was no getting away from the fact that the waistband rested right on welts from the previous night’s caning, and his eyes watered. 

By the time he was finished, his shaking had turned into irregular spasms, but being clothed made him feel a little less vulnerable, a little less broken.  Rumplestiltskin was finally able to suck in a deep breath, to let his magic continue to wrap around him and almost make him feel as if he was someone to be feared, instead of someone who did the fearing.  Unfortunately, Zelena must have seen the look on his face, because she strode forward swiftly, bouncing right into his personal space.  Unable to help himself, Rumplestiltskin flinched. 

She didn’t say a word, just forced her hand into his trousers and squeezed hard, making Rumplestiltskin gasp sharply in pain.  His hands twitched hard, aching to push her away but utterly unable to do so.  He could only push his head back against the mesh, shaking and hoping she’d stop, feeling violated all over again. Even had he not been wounded and raw, her harsh touch would have been painful, squeezing hard and nails pressing into tender flesh.  

“You belong to me,” Zelena hissed, inserting her nails into one of the still-open wounds from the dagger.  Rumplestiltskin sobbed.  “You are my slave.  Say it.” 

His curse hovered, waiting to pounce if he so much as hesitated, and the last five days had taught him to avoid that, if nothing else.  But he was also shaking too hard, hurting too much, to resist—and he knew how vicious Zelena was now, exactly how badly she’d hurt him.  And worse yet, so long as she held the dagger, it was _true._ Rumplestiltskin only closed his eyes, his voice barely audible:  “I am your slave.” 

“You don’t sound terribly convincing.”  Without warning, he felt the tingle of magic and his belt snapping open, followed by the zipper on his trousers sliding downwards.  His eyes flew open in time to see the dagger moving. 

“Don’t—” The word came out in a gasp, but did not deter Zelena.  Her right hand pulled his penis free of his clothing and the left brought the dagger down, cutting into him a third time as Rumplestiltskin cried out brokenly, still too weak to scream. 

“Don’t what?” she asked innocently, cocking her head sideways and raising her eyebrows as he sobbed.  “Don’t cut you a fourth time?” 

He could only nod, chest heaving and hands _still_ unable to move, no matter how much he willed them to shove her away.  She squeezed, and he saw stars, wailing softly as acidic poison worked its way into his system, turning skin purple and black where it was not stained red by blood.  Tears blurred his vision, but he could still see the change when the deceptively innocent expression was replaced by a vicious sneer. 

“You don’t get what you want here, Rumple,” Zelena snarled, and brought the dagger down again, creating a fourth cut opposite the one she’d just completed.  Rumplestiltskin tried to scream again, squeezing his eyes shut against the agony, starting to whimper helplessly once more. 

Even that wooden rod inside him hadn’t hurt like this.  This— _this_ —the new cuts were as shallow as the now five-day old ones, and they were every bit as toxic, fresh and burning.  His entire body was shaking, twitching, and when Zelena started to caress him again, his head snapped aside as he sobbed, unable to watch her fondle him like he was some toy.  All while he couldn’t stop her…and his body started responding to her touch.  He knew it was magic, knew it was her spell working on him, but the way she could make the pain _arousing_ was still beyond humiliating.  And he could do _nothing_.  All he could do was cry and feel violated, hot tears rolling down his face while Zelena pinched and rubbed. 

Finally, she stopped, and he shuddered in relief when her hands left him, not caring that part of his traitorous body shifted towards her hand as it drifted away.  “Clean the blood off and put yourself back together,” Zelena ordered.  “I have a job for you to do.” 

Silently, still shaking, Rumplestiltskin complied, wincing and whimpering as he pulled his trousers and boxers back up and buckled his belt.  Even the smooth silk of his boxers hurt—but that lesser pain was suddenly forgotten when Zelena pressed the flat side of the dagger between his legs, making him sob again.  Her free hand came up to cup his cheek, almost tenderly. 

“No tears,” she said softly, but it was a _command_ , and Rumplestiltskin could feel the odd tingle as his tear ducts simply stopped working.  “Hide your pain like a good little Dark One.” 

The flat of the blade pressed into him, hard, and pain shot through him—but even when an agonized whimper tried to come out, it caught in his throat.  His breathing still quickened, still caught painfully, but no sound emerged, and Rumplestiltskin felt the curse wrapping around his reactions, keeping his facial expressions somewhat controlled and his eyes from going wide with pain.  The dagger withdrew, only to smack against him without warning, and he tried to cry out, feeling a convulsion that never came well up inside him.  Rumplestiltskin could feel his face tighten, but no other reaction escaped.  No indication of his suffering made it to the surface. 

He had never felt so trapped as he did now, a prisoner in his own body. 

“Excellent.”  She sounded like the word was a victory, and hit him with the dagger one more time, just for good measure.  He wanted to scream.  “We can’t have anyone seeing how damaged you are, now can we?  Appearances matter.” 

With that, she reached up and fastened the top button of his tattered shirt, pulling it tight against the prong collar still digging into his skin.  Breathing grew hard, and Rumplestiltskin choked briefly; apparently _hiding_ pain didn’t include concealing an inability to breathe.  Zelena fussed over the collar of his shirt for a moment, adjusting it just so, and finally settled it in a position where Rumplestiltskin could more or less breathe unimpeded, or at least as well as he’d been able to moments earlier.  He just shook, watching her warily. 

“Now,” Zelena said with a smile, stepping back to study her handiwork.  “I have someone for you to kill.”

 

*****************

 

Apparently, King Francis had somehow snubbed Zelena when she’d been a midwife.  She hadn’t provided details, and Rumplestiltskin had been uninterested in asking.  Her commands had been specific enough: _Toy with his son.  Make him suffer.  Kill Prince Thomas._   Zelena knew, of course, that depriving another man of his son would only reopen all of Rumplestiltskin’s own wounds, which was probably why she had chosen such a target.  She did so love her little games—and, of course, she wanted to make a statement about who was in control of whom.  Zelena hadn’t had much of an opportunity to demonstrate her control over the Dark One during her little face off with Regina, so she undoubtedly wanted to make sure that all of Storybrooke knew what was going on. 

That, and she was clever enough to know that if she had them running scared, the hero types would be less likely to figure out what she was up to in the meantime.  Unfortunately, Rumplestiltskin was clever, too, and though he’d been shaking while he’d listened to her commands, he’d also been _thinking._   Zelena hadn’t managed to close that loophole he’d spotted, either, though she’d hemmed him in quite effectively, otherwise. 

The commands had burned in heavily.  _You will not tell anyone_ anything _about my plans.  You will not tell them what I have or have not done.  You will not take any side trips, or do_ anything _other than what I have ordered you to do._ And of course, there was the one he had expected: _You will not tell anyone you’re in pain or what has happened to you. You will not let them_ see _anything but the Dark One._  

That left him striding down one of Storybrooke’s finer streets, feeling the echoes of pain rolling through his body with each step, though not nearly so badly as he would have had Rumplestiltskin not been able to dull his own ability to feel physical sensations.  He’d pay for it later, pay for the quick and dirty magic he’d done to do that without disobeying any of Zelena’s commands, but it was worth the price to experience a few hours free of it.  Had only five days really passed?  Zelena had hurt him before that marathon started, but never like that, and he still wanted to find a corner and cry out the horror of what she had done.  But that was not an option.  _They will only see the Dark One._  

The only way to do this, he knew, was to embrace the darkness he sometimes tried to fight.  Rumplestiltskin had been trying to be a better man, to deny the nature of his curse.  _And look where that got you,_ the seductive voice of the demon inside him whispered.  _You_ died _for them, and here you are, your son dead and you helpless to protect the only person in the who_ — 

No.  He would not think of Baelfire.  He could not, not and remain sane.  And he could only pray that Zelena would be satisfied with hurting him and would not force him to harm Belle.  That was the only thing he knew he would still fight her on—and yet he knew he would lose.  Experience had taught him that. 

“Going somewhere, dearie?” 

They’d all run from him, of course, when Rumplestiltskin had chosen to appear on the street a hundred or so yards away from his target.  _Both_ of his targets, for all that one would live through the day.  _Let them see you.  Make them afraid,_ Zelena had ordered, and oh, the Dark One could do that.  He could even do this without flinching.  He’d never much cared for Francis or his foolish boy.  Most of the town could drop into the ocean or burn for all Rumplestiltskin had ever cared; it was the fact that this wasn’t _his_ choice that rankled the most.  Not the killing.   He’d killed too many to count, even if his days as a bloodthirsty murderer were mostly behind him. 

“Run, Thomas!” Francis tried to tell his son, tried to be the brave father who saved his boy.  A flicker of something like memory reared up within Rumplestiltskin, but he quashed it before his curse could do so.  There was no room for grief amidst darkness, and darkness was what he let sweep around him, let the curse embrace him like the old friend it was instead of the weapon that had been so often used to destroy him. 

“I’m afraid that won’t be happening,” he told the king, and suddenly he was standing in front of the pair.  Transporting himself with magic hurt less, so he took advantage of the fact that doing so would only intimidate them further.  Both king and prince were frozen in place; neither could move their feet, of course.  He’d seen to that when he arrived. 

Thomas, young fool that he was, tried to move in front of his father.  Arrogant royals, both of them, but they did love one another.  _Don’t think about that now._   Rumplestiltskin the man needed the curse now, needed his darkness.  Otherwise he could never have done this. 

“Don’t look so frightened, _Your Majesty_ ,” he told Francis in that sing-songy voice they all knew so well, burying his pain under playful rage.  “You’ll survive this.” 

King Francis was anything but stupid.  He understood the reference right away, and went stark white with terror.  “Not my son.  Please.  I’ll give you anything—” 

“No deals today, dearie,” Rumplestiltskin cut him off, his voice softer than he wanted it to be.  It was as much mercy as he could give, and he couldn’t bear to listen to a father plead for his son. 

The boy was brave.  Rumplestiltskin had to give him that. _Toy with his son.  Make him suffer.  Kill Prince Thomas._   He’d completed the first command.  Stalking them.  Taunting him.  Letting Thomas know he was going to die.  And as for the second—well, Zelena never specified _who_ he had to make suffer.  Watching his son made Francis suffer, and that was enough.  _More than enough._  

Quick as lightning, his hand reached into Thomas’ chest, ripping his heart out without so much as blinking.  He would be damned if he’d let Francis or any of the various spectators see his own pain, his own conflict, the way he was not in control of himself.  Rumplestiltskin had always preferred to be seen as evil rather than weak, so evil it would be. 

“Please don’t.” Francis would probably have been on his knees had Rumplestiltskin’s magic not anchored him in place earlier.  “Not this.  Not my boy—” 

Rumplestiltskin just turned away, the heart in his hand, already squeezing.  It was the quickest death he could provide, and as he walked, the dust dribbled out of his fingers, leaving a trail of ash on the asphalt street.  A wave of his other hand released both of them, and he could hear the king sobbing over his son’s body as he disappeared.

 

*****************

 

His second target was a waitress who had apparently thrown water at Zelena two days earlier in a misplaced fit of heroism.  It hadn’t worked, of course—that was what people got for believing movies had all the answers—but the attempt had been somewhat noble, all the same.  Zelena had promptly turned the young woman into a crow for revenge and thought that was the end of it.  However, unbeknownst to Zelena, the waitress turned out to have a True Love of her own (a construction worker in Storybrooke, but a baker back home) who had kissed her back into being human.  The pair had tried to hide, and almost managed, but news somehow reached Zelena. 

Rumplestiltskin killed them both, the True Love first and the waitress second.  _Make her watch him die,_ Zelena had ordered.  _Painfully._   So he had crushed every internal organ the construction worker possessed—certainly a painful death, if very quick.  But Zelena had never said to do so slowly, and he forced the waitress to watch it all in horror before drowning her.  Zelena had been very specific on that point, and there’d been no way around it.  Her neighbors later found the waitress face down in a bucket of water.

 

*****************

 

Finding loopholes in the final command was harder than the first two.  Again, Zelena had been very specific, which was why Rumplestiltskin found himself standing in front of town hall with Sir Frederick’s heart in his hand.  Only an incompetent or weak sorcerer needed to _speak_ to control someone via their heart, and he was neither.  So he channeled his will—or rather, Zelena’s, because this particular brand of sickness was all hers—into Sir Frederick, and sent the man to kill his own True Love.  

Princess Abigail was braver than the others had been.  When she’d realized what had to happen, she’d stood her ground, telling Frederick that she loved him and she didn’t blame him.  The poor man was sobbing as he did what he had no choice but to do; Rumplestiltskin well understood the feeling of your hands doing exactly what you did not want, and guided Frederick’s hands to Abigail’s neck.  The brave princess—once Kathryn Nolan—was crying, too though she was doing so with a quiet dignity that her husband utterly lacked.  Then again, it was easier to face death than to kill the one you loved more than life itself, as Frederick was undoubtedly learning at the moment. 

“I love you,” Abigail said to Frederick before she lost the breath to speak.  _Make him look in her eyes while he kills her,_ Zelena had commanded.  And so Frederick choked the life out of his True Love, his hands shaking with the effort of trying to tear them away from her.  It was doomed to failure, of course. 

“I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry…” Frederick kept repeating.  Rumplestiltskin could have forced him to be silent.  He could have made the man kill his True Love with no expression at all, and could have only let the grief hit Frederick later.   Holding someone’s heart really did give you that much power, and it might have been kinder, but Zelena’s command had been specific, again.  _Make sure he knows what he has done._  

There was a warning in this.  And it wasn’t even subtle. 

Finally, Princess Abigail breathed her brave last, with her father and countless others looking on, trying desperately to get through the simple shield Rumplestiltskin had thrown up to keep them out.  They wouldn’t manage, of course.  There was too much darkness, too much power, swirling around him.  He would have preferred to do this without an audience, but his preferences in that respect were irrelevant.  Once Abigail was dead, he allowed Frederick’s hands to release her neck, and watched the broken man drop to his True Love’s side, cradling her dead body and trying desperately to kiss her back to life. 

“True Love can’t bring back the dead, dearie,” Rumplestiltskin told the young knight as he approached, Frederick’s heart still in his hand. 

“Then kill me.”  It was a plea as much as anything else.  “You… _monster_.” 

Frederick had probably called him that to goad Rumplestiltskin into it; unfortunately for him, Rumplestiltskin agreed with the assessment. 

“Not today,” he replied quietly, crouching to shove Frederick’s heart back in his chest, noting the shattered look in the young man’s eyes and knowing that Frederick was half dead already.  Rumplestiltskin’s voice dropped, and he offered the closest thing to an apology that he could:  “Not for a long time.” 

He’d enchanted the heart, of course.  Frederick wouldn’t be able to kill himself, and he wouldn’t be able to ask someone else to do it for him, either.  Freak accidents could always happen, but barring that, Frederick was going to live to a ripe old age, knowing all the while that he had had the most perfect love…and had killed her with his own two hands.  Losing one’s True Love was enough to break anyone, Rumplestiltskin knew.  Most did not long survive the death of their True Love—Regina had been an exception on that front.  But Frederick would.  Frederick would _live_ and remember what he had one. 

Rising stiffly, Rumplestiltskin turned his back on the still-sobbing knight, his face expressionless and darkness filling him.  A flick of his left hand swept the temporary shielding spell away, and Midas rushed to his dead daughter’s side.  Most of the rest of the crowd simply stared at Rumplestiltskin in shock, and he walked through them as if they were not there.  Not one of them dared try to stop him.

 

*****************

 

As ordered, he returned to his cage after Abigail was dead, appearing and demolishing the walls between himself and his pain all at the same time.  Doing so was foolish, but he had little choice; Rumplestiltskin didn’t think he could manage the pain if he let it show where people could see.  His body wouldn’t react to it thanks to Zelena’s commands, but that didn’t mean he’d be able to _function_ well enough to actually hide it…as he’d been ordered to do.  So he’d convinced his curse that dulling the pain had been in keeping with Zelena’s commands, but he didn’t dare continue to do so here.  Zelena would notice. 

The pain hit him like a freight train going full speed, and Rumplestiltskin staggered, barely catching himself.  Fortunately, Zelena was not there to see how the world in front of his eyes went white with agony, to see him try to sob and prove unable to.  He’d been wrapped up in magic and in darkness, and had somehow managed to forget—just for those few hours—how very badly she’d hurt him.  Still unable to show much of a visible reaction, Rumplestiltskin stumbled over to one side of the cage and just leaned against the mesh, closing his eyes and trying to adjust to the renewed feeling of pain racing through his system.  

“New rule,” Zelena’s voice made him jump.  Somehow, she’d made it down the stairs to stand just outside the door of the cage before he’d noticed her, and a chill of fear raced down Rumplestiltskin’s spine.  “You’ll hide your pain when you’re not on my property.  If you’re anywhere other than here, you hide it.  Otherwise, you can cry all you want.  I rather like you broken.” 

Control shattered like a damn breaking, and before Rumplestiltskin could stop it, a low moan sounded in his throat—but at least the worst of the pain returning had passed already.  

“How were your errands?” she asked next, opening the door and stepping into the cage. 

“Your murders, you mean?” From somewhere, he dredged up a half snarl, again hating having been used like this.  “Do your own dirty work next time.” 

A sudden surge of agony raced out of the dagger and sent him crashing to his knees, shaking and sobbing out a soft cry.  Zelena stepped forward to grab him by the hair and force him to look in her eyes.  “Are we feeling feisty?  Let you use a little magic and suddenly you think you can talk back to me?” 

Rumplestiltskin went very still.  There really wasn’t a right answer to that question, though perhaps he could talk his way around it.  “It’s done as you ordered,” he said, hating how quiet his voice had gotten, how tense his body was. 

“Well, then.”  Suddenly, Zelena’s predatory posture changed, becoming dangerously playful.  “We’ll just have to celebrate, won’t we?” 

She ran a hand through his hair, making Rumplestiltskin flinch away.  He hated her touching him, now more than ever.  But as always, he couldn’t make it very far at all, particularly once Zelena’s fingers suddenly tightened and yanked, making him grunt.  Then the dagger was suddenly at his throat, pressing in tightly. 

“After you tell me what it is you did.” 

His breath caught in his throat.  No, she couldn’t know.  He’d been so damn careful—unless she’d been there the entire time, and that had been why he’d failed to notice her arrival.  Invisibility had always been one of Zelena’s better talents, and she loved to watch people when they didn’t know she was there.  She’d been doing it since childhood, she’d told him once, which was one of the reasons was why her adopted father had thought she was so unnatural.  It took all of the self-control he still had—and that wasn’t much—to look her in the eye and ask: “Whatever are you talking about?” 

Magic raced along the dagger and right into his nervous system, slamming pain into him strongly enough to make him almost actually scream.  At that level, a few seconds of it would probably have been enough, but Zelena held him under for several minutes, letting him collapse into a sobbing ball on the floor before she called his curse off.  “Don’t lie to me, _slave._ ” 

Coherency crept back in more slowly than usual.  Rumplestiltskin didn’t have any fight left in him, even if this was the only loophole he’d found, the only way to escape the pain if only for a little while…but when a second wave of agony rolled in hard on the heels of her words, he knew he had no chance of resistance.  He was struggling for air and whimpering by the second time Zelena relented, shaking weakly.  _So much for self-control._   He’d felt alive for two hours.  No longer.  Now he was just broken again. 

“Answer me,” Zelena hissed.  “What did you do?” 

“I isolated myself from the pain,” Rumplestiltskin whispered, eyes half closed and bracing himself as best he could.  He hadn’t even been able to block out all of it, but what he had been able to push aside had made for an existence that was so much better than this.  “You wanted me to function.” 

She dragged him to his knees by the hair, and he didn’t fight.  “I wanted you to _suffer_.  And now you’ll pay for trying to avoid that.”

 

*****************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Rumplestiltskin pays the price for finding that loophole.


	5. Chapter 5

A half an hour later, Rumplestiltskin had indeed paid for the loophole he’d found and exploited. By that point, he was naked again, strung up by his wrists to the top of the cage, with his feet spread and shackled to rings Zelena had conjured in existence. His entire body ached and muscles spasmed frequently, but being stretched uncomfortably was the least of his problems. Had that been the only issue, he might not have been sobbing so brokenly. 

Zelena had gagged him again, so that she “didn’t have to listen to him whining,” as she’d snapped. But the heavy metal gag hadn’t done much to quiet him; though Rumplestiltskin still couldn’t scream very _well,_ he’d discovered that enough pain could indeed make him scream again. Zelena bringing out the cattle prod again had accomplished that, at least once she’d started focusing below his waist, ramping the electricity level up far enough to give him some very serious burns. He’d lost his mind a bit, somewhere in the middle of that, fighting mindlessly against his bonds and just desperate to get away, but the Witch had not relented, and not given him a command using the dagger, either. She’d just let him squirm helplessly against the chains that held him, sobbing and screaming. 

Now, she’d stepped back and let him work his way back towards coherency, shaking spastically and unable to even hold his head up. Everything _hurt._ The small corner of his brain that still worked stared numbly downwards and dredged up memories of a Land Without Magic education he’d never actually received, noting that the burns on his genitals were on the upper end of second degree burns. His skin was already blistering in places, deep red in color and wet looking. Did Zelena know that if she burned him more severely, he would start to lose feeling? Rumplestiltskin hoped not, almost hoped she’d keep at this until the burns grew deep enough to go numb. Still, looking at the damage done and _feeling_ the agony of mere air touching the burned and blistered skin, Rumplestiltskin had a hard time thinking at all. He would have been pleading with her to stop had he not been gagged; now, he could only whimper and cry. 

A hard hand grabbed him by the chin, and Rumplestiltskin flinched. With him bound the way he was, Zelena had tucked the dagger into a boot, which freed up a hand for the cattle prod and one for anything else she desired. Now that free hand forced his chin up, and he looked at her out of bleary eyes, tremors still racing through his body. 

“Don’t go slipping off on me now,” she said with that gloating smile he’d grown to hate so much. “Stay coherent.” 

He’d still been drifting enough that renewed awareness slammed into him like a tidal wave, and Rumplestiltskin moaned. Magic rushed through him, obedient to her command, pulling him away from the fuzzy edges of unconsciousness that his battered body demanded. This body of his was human, after all, for all the darkness it contained, and it burned and bled like any other human. And it _hurt._  

Zelena studied him, the smile twisting into an annoyed sneer. “You’re suffering quite beautifully,” she remarked contemplatively. “But I’m still not sure if you’ve learned your lesson. Shall I continue?” 

Shaking his head with the heavy gag in was hard, but Rumplestiltskin tried, whimpering out an inarticulate plea. The point had been made, and though he’d probably never be able to stop himself from finding loopholes, he’d at least be a lot more careful about how he chose to slip through them. 

Her hand shot downwards immediately, wrapping around his penis and squeezing _hard_. His vision went white. No colors, just white with sheer agony as Rumplestiltskin wailed in pain, his head snapping back and his body convulsing wildly. Even a slight touch would have hurt with the number of burns Zelena had inflicted upon him, but when her nails dug in, at least one blister burst, and for a long moment, he couldn’t breathe through the pain. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t so much as move. He only wailed and screamed and failed to breathe through the tears gushing down his face. 

“It’s too bad for you, _slave_ , that what you want doesn’t matter,” Zelena hissed as she let go. “And what _I_ want is to hurt you. You tried to avoid that earlier. If you hadn’t, this wouldn’t be happening, so consider that next time you try to sidestep.” 

Green smoke filled the air, and Rumplestiltskin felt the tingle of magic off to his right. When the smoke cleared and he managed to turn his head, he saw that Zelena held a cylindrical object in her hand, about the length of her forearm and made of metal. It wasn’t smooth, though; metal teeth flared up off of the object at intervals of about an inch. His eyes flicked from it back to Zelena’s face; his mind was still sluggish from the pain, despite the enforced coherency, and— 

“Using the leg of a stool was so uncivilized,” she told him smugly. “This time I created something special. Just to _remind_ you of the cost of disobedience.” 

His eyes widened. She wasn’t going to—she couldn’t— 

A desperate noise emerged from behind the gag; Rumplestiltskin shook his head frantically, all the while with a terrible sinking feeling rising within him. 

“Oh, yes.” Clearly, she understood his objections and did not care. “Perhaps this will finally teach you your lesson, Rumple.” 

She stepped out of his line of view, and Rumplestiltskin started to crane his neck to watch as Zelena slipped around to his right, a sharp yank on the collar made him whimper and choke, forcing him to keep his head straight. Zelena trailed the metal object along his right side as she moved, and Rumplestiltskin felt its teeth catch in more than one open wound. Twitching and whimpering, he tried to turn his head again, only to find that she still had a grip on the collar. He coughed, his shaking growing worse and worse, as the hand shifted to his shoulder. She must have put the cattle prod down, but that was small consolation at the moment. Zelena leaned forward to whisper in his ear: 

“Your new friend is thicker than your old one. And if you annoy me, I’ll just make its teeth grow inside you.” 

This time his desperate plea was intelligible from behind the gag, just barely: “No…!” 

“Then don’t disobey me,” Zelena spat, and Rumplestiltskin suddenly felt the end of the metal rod touch the area that had already been so torn up by its wooden counterpart, and he sobbed, both in pain and despair. Bound as he was, he couldn’t fight her, couldn’t even pull further than a few millimeters away, and even if he could have, she had the dagger to fall back upon. He’d never felt so empty, so helpless. 

Zelena shoved it in without any preamble, letting the metal teeth tear into him as Rumplestiltskin found the strength to scream. She let go as it worked its way in, guiding it with magic and moving around in front of him so she could watch his face. Rumplestiltskin hardly noticed, thrashing in his chains and jerking wildly with every thrust. Distantly, he felt the blood splashing down the backs of his legs and his inner thighs, warm and sticky, but that sensation was nothing compared to the pain. This would have killed him had he been human, he knew, with the teeth tearing up his insides, shredding flesh and tissue. Had she not forced him to remain coherent, his mind would have tipped off the edge long before the new invader made it halfway into him, but he had no such refuge. 

So when it jerked almost all the way out, only to shove back in, Rumplestiltskin wailed inhumanely, unable to find the air even to plead. Then the rod _twisted_ inside of him and he almost did black out, curse or no curse, sobbing out whimpers and again unable to scream through the pain. Each noise he made was high pitched and broken; he was coherent but overloaded, with no room in his mind for anything but this horrible pain. He felt like his body was going to break in half. Like this was actually going to kill him. He could no longer see through the pain, though he was fairly sure that his eyes were open. But then another thrust came, and then another, and for a few long moments the agony stole away his ability to make any noise at all. 

He didn’t know how long it lasted, only that when there were only two inches left outside him and the metal was buried in as deeply as it could possibly go, Zelena touched it. And Rumplestiltskin moaned out a sharp and long whimper, all he could manage when it hurt too much to scream. 

“If you were human, Dark One, this would kill you,” Zelena murmured, echoing his earlier thoughts. And then suddenly the metal _turned_ inside him, and Rumplestiltskin sobbed out another broken whimper, a vicious tremor ripping through him. 

Even the tremor made it hurt more. 

“Have you learned your lesson?” she asked, and Rumplestiltskin did not hesitate before nodding miserably, but her hard voice only made his heart sink: “This stays in until I’m convinced.”

He moaned. 

“You didn’t expect _mercy,_ did you?” Zelena snarled, her lips almost touching his left cheek as his vision finally cleared. “Perhaps next time I have errands for you to run I will have you do it with your new friend in, since you abused my kindness last time.”

Rumplestiltskin could only shudder helplessly, closing his eyes and shaking his head in terror. Fingers touched his hip, trailing back and downwards, and he sobbed in pain, desperately shaking his head again, trying to tell her that he wasn’t going to resist. There wasn’t any defiance left in him, not after this. Rumplestiltskin wanted nothing more than to crawl into a corner and hide, but he knew she’d never give him that opportunity. Not when Zelena knew he was so broken.

“Are you going to behave yourself, slave?” she asked almost conversationally, with just a hint of malice behind the words. But her eyes were dancing dangerously as the gag vanished, and Rumplestiltskin shuddered.

“Yes,” he whispered, the ache in his jaw slurring the words.

Her hands reached up to brush sweaty hair out of his face; Rumplestiltskin flinched. “Then no hesitation. No pleading. You’ll do as you’re _told._ Won’t you?” 

He closed his eyes again, not wanting to think about whatever she had in mind. “Yes.” 

“Yes, what?” Zelena asked abruptly. 

“I’ll do as I’m told.” A silent sob shook him as the words came out, but the pain was too much. After the electricity and then this new metal rod, he was done. A few hours of using his own magic without explicit direction had made him feel alive once more, but no longer. Her hands were still on his face. Now he could only say what she wanted to hear and hang limply in his chains, so exhausted and so hurt. 

Zelena pulled his head up, her fingers pushing his eyelids open so Rumplestiltskin had to look at her. Shaking, he did, not wanting to test her, not willing to show the slightest bit of defiance. She didn’t have to do this to him, didn’t need to torture him into compliance—not while she had the dagger—but Zelena clearly wanted to shatter him. And she had. Rumplestiltskin just watched her as she smiled slowly, shivering. 

“Then call me Mistress,” she purred. 

“What?” Shock startled the word out of him, not defiance, but suddenly the cattle prod was back in Zelena’s hand. Rumplestiltskin’s breath caught in his throat. _“Don’t!”_  

The prod vanished between his legs even as Rumplestiltskin tried to plead, and made contact with the metal rod— 

The wail tore wildly out of his throat, and Rumplestiltskin convulsed hard enough to almost break the chains holding him, thrashing violently as electricity raced through his body. A distant part of his mind noted the smell of burning skin and boiling blood, but the violent tremors racking his body took away any ability he had to think; he could only react, body buckling helplessly. He didn’t know how long Zelena kept the electricity on, but Rumplestiltskin was limp and whimpering by the time she was done, dry heaving up silent attempts to scream. He didn’t even realize he was crying until Zelena brushed the tears off of his face, and Rumplestiltskin jerked away in terror.

“Don’t pull away from me,” she hissed, and the prod touched again.

Rumplestiltskin sobbed brokenly, thrashing in his chains again and trying to scream. His mouth gaped open and the cry welled up in his chest, but nothing came out except the quiet sob. When she pulled it away the second time, Zelena only dropped the prod an inch or so, leaving the prongs on its end between his trembling legs. She raised an eyebrow at him, cocking her head inquisitively, and Rumplestiltskin tried with all his might to whisper a plea, but only a ragged whimper came out. His body was still shuddering and shaking uncontrollably, and he flinched again when Zelena touched his face, utterly unable to stop himself but desperate to get away from her.

The cattle prod touched again the moment he so much as twitched away. His curse wouldn’t let him go far, but she still punished the small effort he could manage, and Rumplestiltskin shrieked. Several long seconds later, Zelena shifted the cattle prod away, her hand immediately coming up to Rumplestiltskin’s tear-covered face. He felt her fingers even though he couldn’t see her hands through the blur that had become his vision, and terror spiked through him at the simple touch. Instinct took over and he tried to pull back, only for the cattle prod to touch again.

Zelena repeated the lesson a third time, then a fourth, and then kept going until Rumplestiltskin hung limply again and didn’t even try to pull away from her. He lost count somewhere around the eighth or ninth shock, and knew it went on far longer than that. But he was finally too afraid to pull away, just shaking and trying to cry when Zelena shocked him one more time. He didn’t move when she touched his face, just cried.

“Call me Mistress,” Zelena ordered, cupping his cheek in one hand while the cattle prod hovered between his legs.

“Mistress,” he whimpered obediently.

“Good boy.” Her fingers ran through his hair, and Rumplestiltskin only closed his eyes. The prod bounced off his leg, then, not on, but it was still enough to make his body jerk in fear.

“Please…” he whispered helplessly, so afraid.

“I said no pleading, _slave_ ,” Zelena snarled, and this time the prod touched his genitals.

The pain almost made him black out, and Rumplestiltskin’s mouth gaped open in another silent scream. But he remembered not to move away from her, stayed brokenly where he was, and finally the electricity stopped and Zelena stroked his hair once more. Weakness had slowed his tears to a trickle, and he just let her do as she wished, not daring even to _want_ to pull away. She wanted him to be still and accept the pain. That was what he would have to do.

“Good,” Zelena purred, her hand shifting to his face and wiping tears away. “Very good.”

The touch left his face, and Rumplestiltskin could not help shuddering in relief. But he’d barely started to register how nice it was to have her not touching him before the chains holding him up suddenly vanished, and Rumplestiltskin crumbled into a heap on the floor. Somehow, he managed to land on his side instead of on his face, but his burned body making contact with the floor still drove a breathless gasp out of him. It hurt too much to scream. Everything hurt too much. Half-consciously, he just started to curl up, still shaking weakly as his limbs dragged against the concrete floor.

The cold floor was almost a relief against the blisters and burns, but any kind of contact hurt. Moving was agony, but if he could curl into a ball he might be able to somehow shield himself, just to have a few moments of rest. The high number of shocks he’d received over the last hour meant his muscles were _still_ spasming, moving in a tick-tick-tick fashion that was completely beyond his control. A human body couldn’t take this, and underneath his horrible curse, Rumplestiltskin had always been human. More so in Storybrooke than anywhere else.

“Get up,” Zelena ordered all too soon, having only waited a few moments for him to catch his breath. Rumplestiltskin felt the pull of his curse immediately and gave himself too it, too weak to stand on his own but feeling his magic prickling under his limbs as they obeyed Zelena’s command.

Swaying, he stood in front of her, his head still drooped weakly and staring blankly at the floor. He felt her step close as much as he saw or heard the motion, and then a finger under his chin pushed his head up. Wide and wild-eyed, he stared at her dizzily, wanting to shrink into himself and terrified to move. Zelena had the dagger in her hand again, and not the cattle prod, but he could see the fiendish device not far away, lying on the blood-covered stool.

“Are you going to be good for me?” the Witch asked softly, and the question carried a dozen different meanings.

His heart sank. “Yes,” Rumplestiltskin whispered, then jumped as he saw the dagger twitch. “Mistress.”

The second word came out almost inaudibly, but he said it. He didn’t want a reminder, couldn’t take another punishment.

His head was spinning with pain, stuck in a vortex of agony from which his curse would not allow him to escape. Rumplestiltskin could feel how his throat tried to close up on each breath—too much screaming and too much electricity made it not want to work. He could feel the way his muscles spasmed and tried to give out, despite the way his curse forced them to function. He could feel the blood running down his legs, the metal stabbing into him, each row of teeth digging in and shredding his innards. He could even feel how his magic pieced together and shielded vital areas from that which would fatally wound him, allowing the injury until his still-human body would cease to function and then fixing it just enough that he could survive and hurt—because the curse interpreted every intention and desire coming from dagger’s mistress, and Zelena wanted him to hurt. So hurt he did, standing there and barely able to whimper.

A nasty smile creased Zelena’s face, her eyes dancing with triumph. Even in his battered state, Rumplestiltskin could taste her feeling of victory, but the normal rage that rose upon seeing her win refused to stir. He was too beaten. Reaching up, Zelena clipped a leather leash to the front of the prong collar, and Rumplestiltskin only shook harder. “Then come along, slave.”

The tug came hard and fast, almost unbalancing him as Zelena hauled him forward. Choking out a whimper, Rumplestiltskin stumbled after her, the metal rod digging into his insides with every step. The teeth bit into tissue _hard_ , making Rumplestiltskin let out a long and low moan as the room whipped into another spin, pain hammering into his lower body like the percussion section of an orchestra. Swaying drunkenly, every step a struggle, he barely registered surprise when she led him out of the cage and towards the stairs. But then she stopped, turning to study him as he trembled. He was _trying_ to obey her, trying so hard not to be punished more—

“Turn around.”

He needed the tug of the curse to help his wooden legs move, needed it to keep him from shaking to pieces. The last thing Rumplestiltskin wanted to do was to present his back to Zelena, but he had no choice. If he tried to fight, she’d only hurt him and _then_ do whatever she had in mind, probably making things worse in the process. So he obeyed, forcing one foot to move and then the other, wobbling precariously.   Keeping his balance was so hard when the teeth dug into him like this, chewing at him every time his legs so much as twitched. He needed to scream, but his body couldn’t muster up the strength.

Hands touched his wrists; Zelena drew his hands behind his back almost gently. The motion still made Rumplestiltskin stagger and almost fall. “We can’t have you walking around unbound,” she murmured in his ear, shackling his wrists once more. “You have to earn that.”

The message was clear: he’d tried to resist and was still being punished for it. But somehow Rumplestiltskin still did not expect the shackles to be fastened down to the metal rod sticking out of him, didn’t expect to feel it shift and push _forward_ inside him. The sudden agony made his vision go red, and curse or no, Rumplestiltskin lost his balance, careening into the open cage door and squealing in pain. The impact cut the noise short, but it was only the presence of the cage that let him keep his balance, trying desperately to lean back and lessen the pressure as he sagged against the mesh for support.

Zelena laughed, and the vicious satisfaction in her giggle wiped any thoughts of pleading out of his mind. She tugged on the leash, jerking him around to face the stairs once more.  

“Come along.”

Terrified and hurting, Rumplestiltskin stumbled after her, staggering each step as the rod shifted and whimpering in pain. Zelena walked briskly, all but dragging him by the collar, but the prongs digging in and restricting his airway were nothing compared to the convulsion-causing agony from that metal rod. She kept pulling so that he had to lean forward, making his arms _tug_ , and by the time Rumplestiltskin made it halfway up the stairs, he had somehow found the strength to sob in pain. He was hyperventilating by the time they reached the top, unable to get in enough air but having to function anyway, forcing one step and then another. His bare feet dragged over the cold ground as winter wind bit into his naked body, and a part of Rumplestiltskin cowered in shame as Zelena led him across her yard. She’d always transported him into the house before, never made him walk like this, and he _felt_ like a slave as she dragged him along, bound and helpless.

The furthest he’d ever managed with his old ‘friend’ in had been a dozen steps or so; Rumplestiltskin had not even imagined its successor could hurt this badly as he stumbled and lurched towards the farm house on Zelena’s heels, struggling to catch up with her as she strode ahead. He was crying again, shaking and feeling hot blood splatter down his freezing cold legs. He couldn’t see through the pain, couldn’t make out anything more than a blur of afternoon fading into evening, brown-green grass, and a white house.

Finally, they reached the house, and Zelena pulled him up the front steps and inside. She didn’t stop until she’d hauled him up the stairs and into a very familiar bathroom. Rumplestiltskin’s heart sank as she yanked him through the door, and he stopped when she gestured at him with the dagger, shaking violently. Much to his surprise, however, the shackles dropped off of his hands and he was able to cautiously move his aching arms back to his sides without pulling on the rod. Tremors were still racing through his body, blood dripping to the floor as he whimpered helplessly, struggling to catch his breath and only on his feet because his curse held him there.

“Have you learned your lesson?” Zelena asked softly, her breath tickling his ear as she detached the leash from the prong collar.

Rumplestiltskin shuddered, still breathing hard. “Yes,” he whispered, flinching. “Mistress.”

There was enough of him left to hate himself for being willing to call her that, but not much.

“Excellent. Now will you behave yourself? Perfectly?”

“Yes.” His voice turned very tiny on the word, and Rumplestiltskin just closed his eyes.

The sharp taste of magic made his eyes snap open in shock, however, when Zelena waved a hand and the metal rod vanished from inside of him. Rumplestiltskin staggered, both in relief and surprise, feeling something akin to a sudden blood rush spurning his dizziness on. A pained, relieved groan escaped him as he flailed for balance, but he caught himself as Zelena spoke.

“You had better,” she warned him, her hand touching his abdomen briefly before she bent to turn the facet on and fill the tub. He managed not to pull away, but still flinched. A moment later, she’d turned back to him, and studied him curiously, silent while he shook in fear and in pain. Moments ticked by as the tub filled—not the shower this time, which worried Rumplestiltskin more than he wanted to admit—and then Zelena reached up to brush hair away from his face.

He trembled hard, his breath catching in his throat. He knew how this worked, knew what came next. Rumplestiltskin didn’t want her touching him, didn’t want to submit to this, but time and again Zelena had proven to him that she would use him however she wanted—and force his body to react to her ministrations as if she were his lover and not his rapist. Parts of his soul chipped off every time she forced him onto her bed, bound and helpless despite the vast power he’d had at his fingertips for three hundred years. He could do nothing to fight her and knew it, particularly after the last hour’s lesson. Now he didn’t even dare beg her not to.

“Shh,” Zelena soothed him with a wicked smile, leaning in to brush her lips over his. Rumplestiltskin shuddered. “Into the tub you go.”

Getting into that tub was one of the last things Rumplestiltskin wanted to do, but he did not dare even hesitate. Slowly, he lowered himself into the warm water, aiming to rest on his knees instead of sit down until the silent command to _sit_ slammed into him. His limbs spasmed when it hit and he slipped, landing hard on his ass. The cry that tore out of his chest was a violent explosion of pain, and Rumplestiltskin convulsed hard enough to crack his head against the wall at the foot of the tub. Pain radiated outwards from every wound, and as his vision clouded over, he couldn’t figure out which was worse—the burns and burst blisters between his legs, or the internal wounds the metal rod had chewed open. Desperately, he tried to lessen the pressure and lift himself off the bottom of the tub, but Zelena snapped:

“Stay,” and he was stuck, with wild tremors rolling through his body. It hurt so much. The water was warm and should have been soothing, but it only made the burns on his lower body flare up, and Rumplestiltskin almost felt like the cattle prod was against his genitals all over again, like the metal rod was still inside him and being electrified. He let out a low, breathless, wail, wanting to scream but unable to find the strength to get such a noise past the pain.

“Bend your knees and spread your legs,” Zelena ordered next, and Rumplestiltskin complied brokenly, managing to cry out again as he shifted his weight. “Hands on the sides of the tub.”

Shaking, Rumplestiltskin did so, hating the way his knees were forced up against the sides of the bathtub and feeling so very vulnerable. He knew where this led, knew what was coming—and then hands touched his face, pushing hair out of his eyes and stroking his cheeks. The touch was gentle, but it still cut deeply—he was scared and he was hurt, and he could do nothing to defend himself while this woman used him. He would rather pain, rather be tortured than be raped, and Zelena’s tender way of stroking his face only made him close his eyes and start to cry.

“Open your eyes,” she murmured, and his eyes opened on their own, blurred with tears. Immediately, one of her hands left his face and started moving downwards.

“Don’t do this,” Rumplestiltskin begged her softly, his body instinctually trying to twitch away from her touch.

“Oh, Rumple.” Zelena smiled, and a sponge appeared in her hand. Slowly, she started cleaning out the wounds on his abdomen, and he flinched wildly, barely stopping himself from jerking away from her touch before he remembered the punishment Zelena would inflict if he pulled away. Trembling, he just tried to brace himself, tried to keep himself still. She’d hurt him if he didn’t, hurt him worse than this was going to hurt—

“Please don’t touch,” he whimpered as he felt the sponge leave his stomach and move downwards, his breath going short with terror. _“Please._ ”

Zelena dropped the sponge, and her hand immediately closed around his penis, making Rumplestiltskin choke out a cry and his vision go white with pain. “What was that?”

He was gasping and sobbing, his entire body convulsing as her fingers tightened viciously. Belatedly, Rumplestiltskin remembered that he wasn’t supposed to plead, that he wasn’t allowed to even ask her to stop. His sobs turned broken; he didn’t know how to respond without angering her, didn’t trust himself to speak without again begging her not to touch him, not to keep her hand moving over burned skin.

“Were you _pleading_?” she demanded.

“Yes,” Rumplestiltskin whimpered helplessly. Nails dug in, and he tried to scream. “Mistress.”

“You’re not supposed to do that, _slave_ ,” she hissed, and Rumplestiltskin shook harder as Zelena’s other hand left his face, retrieving the dagger from her boot. She held it in front of him as he trembled, not daring to try to move away from her, not even realizing that he’d been obeying her without Zelena using the dagger.   But it didn’t matter, couldn’t, because all Zelena had to do was channel her willpower through it and he would have to comply. Or she could hurt him more.

The dagger came down, dipping into the water and immediately cutting into a pair of blisters. His head snapping back, Rumplestiltskin thrashed in pain as burns and blisters were sliced open and acidic poison roared into his system. He’d barely had a chance to recover before Zelena picked up the sponge and started washing him again, a wave of her hand clearing the blood out of the water as she slowly cleaned out each individual wound. Rumplestiltskin could only whimper and cry as she continued, desperate for her to stop but not daring to object. It seemed to take forever, and Zelena scrubbed every inch of him, even washing his hair as he scrunched his eyes shut and shook. Finally, Zelena tucked the dagger away and her newly free hand came up to stroke his face once more, making him let out a broken sob.

“You’re going to be good for me, aren’t you?” Zelena purred.

He couldn’t deal with this, couldn’t fight. The whisper was tiny: “Yes...Mistress.”

“Good.” Abruptly, Zelena rose. “Get out.”

Still shaking, Rumplestiltskin obeyed, stepping out of the tub and shrinking into himself as Zelena toweled him dry. She’d never done that before, had always allowed him to do so, and Rumplestiltskin could only tremble and cower as she dried him off. Almost every touch made new pain flare, and when she touched the rough cloth to the burned area between his legs, Rumplestiltskin staggered and started making broken and high pitched noises that didn’t sound human, even to him.

“Stop the bleeding,” she ordered, and Rumplestiltskin swayed drunkenly as he felt his magic respond to the command, stopping up the flow of blood from his wounds. It didn’t do anything to mitigate the agony, but it meant he was no longer likely to make a mess on her sheets. Zelena always forced him to do so before taking Rumplestiltskin to her bed, and he just closed his eyes in terror, wondering when that metal rod would go back in and when she’d bind his hands back to it, as she always did before she raped him.

Tears had started trickling slowly down his face again by the time she turned away. “Come.”

He had no choice but to follow, so Rumplestiltskin stumbled after Zelena, shaking violently. She led him into her bedroom, right up to her bed, before wheeling around to face him.

“Kneel. Right there.”

Did the curse take him down so quickly, or was it his own terror? Rumplestiltskin could not differentiate between the two, not now. She’d pointed at a spot right next to the bed, and he just did as he was told. His heart sank as Zelena lowered herself onto the bed with one leg on either side of him, but Rumplestiltskin was not surprised. Only heartbroken. He just closed his eyes and waited, head bowed and shaking.

“Are you going to please me or not, slave?” Zelena asked, her tone dangerous.

Shame cut through him, and Rumplestiltskin swallowed hard. He didn’t want to—couldn’t—didn’t—“I’ll please you,” he whispered, hating himself, but so afraid. “Mistress.”

*****************

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up - Zelena demands something far worse than before, and an unexpected visitor shows up.


	6. Chapter 6

“Come here,” Zelena ordered after he’d finished using his  _talented little tongue_ , as she’d commanded.  Numb with shame, his head aching from where Zelena had anchored her hands in his hair, Rumplestiltskin rose to comply, utterly unable to meet her eyes.  He was under no illusions that she was finished with him.  Not with the way Zelena gestured with the dagger to a spot next to her on the bed.

“Kneel here.  Knees apart.” 

Rumplestiltskin swallowed and obeyed, just closing his eyes and turning his head away when Zelena, already half-naked, sat up to study him.  He was shaking, his hands clenched into useless fits at his sides, and just couldn’t look at her.  His courage was spent, and being forced to lick Zelena to an orgasm made him feel utterly empty and humiliated.  It was worse than her using him for her own pleasure as he writhed in pain beneath her, worse than Zelena forcing his body to react to her touch.  But he no longer dared even hesitate, the lesson of an hour ago still burned into his body, wounds fresh and open. 

He wished she’d kill him, wipe away his shame and his terror.  At this point, he didn’t think there was anything else that could.  But he knew Zelena wouldn’t.  Knew she’d continue to use him as she saw fit, and knew that this was going to be the rest of his life.  The dagger made him her slave, and Rumplestiltskin could do nothing save submit unless he wanted her to hurt him even more. 

Suddenly, Zelena’s hand landed on his penis and he keened out a breathless cry of pain, trapped into staying in place by his curse and kept from even shying away from her by his own fear.  But even her currently gentle touch was agony when Zelena’s fingers brushed over blisters and burns, and Rumplestiltskin convulsed, sobbing weakly.  Instinct opened his mouth to voice a plea, but terror strangled the word even as it started to come out.  Much though her touching him hurt, Rumplestiltskin knew Zelena would only pull the cattle prod out again if he tried to get away from her at all, or if he dared beg her to stop.  So, he stayed still and let her caress him, whimpering hard with every breath and with tears starting to roll down his face once more.  Sheer humiliation had made him stop crying before, but now the pain made hot tears start. 

Zelena’s caresses grew harder and harder, and Rumplestiltskin started to convulse in pain.  Slowly, her hand moved to stroke his inner thighs, and he shuddered wildly as her fingers dug into burns.  He wanted nothing more than to close his legs, wanted to pull away from her and curl into a ball, desperate to shield himself from her touch, but he didn’t dare.  He could only cry as Zelena’s hand moved back to his balls and squeezed hard.  Rumplestiltskin wailed. 

Without warning, she leaned in and kissed him, her mouth hungrily devouring his even as her desire translated through the dagger as a command.  His face hot with shame, Rumplestiltskin complied, opening his mouth to let her tongue invade his and squealing in agony when her hand tightened again.  His head snapped back instinctively, pulling away from her as his vision went red with pain and a blister burst. 

“Kiss me like I’m your little lover,” Zelena hissed, and the command dug in even as Rumplestiltskin’s heart constricted.  Thinking of Belle only made this a thousand times worse.  But the curse demanded he comply, and Rumplestiltskin leaned in to kiss Zelena with forced passion, his soul shredding as he did so.  Thinking of Belle’s touch, Belle’s _kiss_ , only made him want to scream and pull away from Zelena, but he could not.  His curse held him close, kissing his torturer with hunger as her hand tightened further and his vision swam with pain. 

He moaned into her mouth, and though the noise was born of pain and not passion, Zelena made a breathless sound of satisfaction against his lips and Rumplestiltskin felt sick.  He wanted to vomit.  Finally, her hand left his genitals and shifted upwards, trailing up his abdomen and then up his chest.  Her nails scraped over a nipple, and Rumplestiltskin cringed.  Then her hand slid around the back of his neck, playing with his hair and pulling his face still closer to hers as Zelena further deepened the kiss. 

He shuddered with relief when Zelena finally leaned back, smiling contently.   But his respite was short lived, because her hand left his face to drift downwards once more.  Magic tingled into his system as she began to caress him once more, and Rumplestiltskin again felt the humiliating sting of arousal gathering in his loins.  Her touch made him start to whimper again, both in shame and in agony, but soon enough Zelena had him hard and panting.  The erection _hurt_ , skin under burns tight and stretched, and his entire body started shaking and twitching in pain.  

A wave of her hand vanished the rest of her clothing, and Rumplestiltskin’s stomach clenched.  Slowly, still smiling, Zelena shifted away from him, leaning back against the pillows with a smirk.  “Come make love to me,” she commanded. 

_“What?”_   Rumplestiltskin stared, eyes wide and shocked.  

She couldn’t—he couldn’t— 

A wave of pain roared in from the dagger, lighting his pain receptors on fire and making him convulse violently.  But he couldn’t imagine how much that was going to hurt, how she expected him to— 

“Make love to me like you would Belle,” Zelena clarified, her smirk turning vicious and her grip on the dagger tightening.  “ _Slave._ ” 

He couldn’t— _wouldn’t_ —but he had to.  His curse forced his body into motion before Rumplestiltskin could fully process his fury.  Terror warred with rage for control of his emotions, and the image of Belle’s face flashed through his mind once more.  For the first time ever, thinking of her brought him no measure of peace whatsoever, no rush of warmth or love.  Now he only felt shame, absolute heart-crushing shame, because Rumplestiltskin knew he could not fight this.  He knew how horribly this was going to hurt, knew that the curse would force his body to _participate_ in this no matter how horrible he felt—and he knew how he would never be able to forgive himself for betraying Belle like this. 

Zelena’s hand cupped his neck again as he moved over her, shaking and crying already.  She pulled him down for another punishing kiss, and then her legs came up to wrap around his waist.  Her heels dug into the wounds on his back and his constant whimpers became a low cry, his body buckling weakly and almost collapsing on top of her.  Zelena laughed merrily as he caught himself, the curse making his body move, making him thrust into her—and Rumplestiltskin screamed in pain. 

Convulsing wildly, he tried desperately to pull back, but Zelena held him in place while Rumplestiltskin kept trying to scream.  His curse kept his body moving, and Rumplestiltskin felt his hands caressing Zelena in return as her hand holding the dagger wrapped around his neck, while her other one tangled in his hair and pulled him down for another kiss.  Her magic kept working over him, kept him aroused and hard, despite how badly the burns on his genitals made what should have been an act of love into utter agony.  

He’d only had enough strength to scream once; the others were trapped in his chest, but his sobs turned to quiet wails as Zelena moaned under him.  Rumplestiltskin tried to blank out, tried to focus on the excruciating pain, but every time he managed to, Zelena brought him back.  “Oh, Rumple,” she breathed, and nails scraped down his chest. 

Amongst all the other pain, he hardly noticed that.  Rumplestiltskin was still trying to scream, still wailing in agony, as his body obeyed her command to make love to her like she was— 

He couldn’t finish that thought.  Belle’s face flashed into his mind again, auburn curls and brilliant blue eyes, and a smile that she wore only for him.  Belle was his guiding light, the only thing that kept his battered soul from being completely lost in darkness.  Being in her arms was like coming home; her touch was a balm to every wound that his curse had torn in him over the centuries.  She _was_ his soul in every way that mattered—and Zelena forcing him to do this, forcing him to think of Belle as he was forced to have sex with the Witch—turned every good memory into ash. 

“Rumple…!”

 

*****************

 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Emma asked as they trekked cautiously across the farmhouse’s frozen lawn.  Belle never broke stride. 

“Yes,” she replied, glad the other woman had decided to come to ‘cover her back,’ as Emma had said, but wishing that Emma understood a little better.  “I know Rumple.  He wouldn’t have killed those people unless he had to, and something was _wrong._   I could _see_ that.” 

Belle had watched Rumplestiltskin force poor Frederick to kill Abigail, and she’d seen the emotion carefully hidden beneath a blank façade.  He’d never once looked her way, but Belle had seen the conflict in his brown eyes that he managed to hide from everyone else.  _“You’ve always seen beneath the mask of the monster,”_ he’d told her more than once, and while everyone else just saw the Dark One forcing a husband to murder his innocent wife, Belle saw the man who loved and was loved in return.  And she knew better than most that he had no choice at all when Zelena had the dagger.  If the Witch had ordered him to do that, he had to. 

She wasn’t sure that Emma and the others fully appreciated how very trapped Rumplestiltskin was, but Belle was not going to let him face it alone any longer.  She might not be able to save him—not yet, not while the Witch had the dagger—but she could at least be there for him.  Hence the midnight trip down to the storm cellar.  It wasn’t even locked. 

_She doesn’t understand that he has people who_ want _to see him,_ Belle realized, feeling a surge of fury towards Zelena.  The horrible woman had left Rumplestiltskin locked in a cage in _two_ different worlds, and she didn’t think any of them cared about that.  About _him._   Scowling, Belle heaved the door to the storm cellar aside and hurried down the stairs, nodding absently as Emma said something about staying above ground and keeping watch.  She wasn’t going to leave Rumplestiltskin alone, not now.  Not ever. 

Thankfully, she’d thought to bring a flashlight, because it was terribly dark outside and there were no lights on in the cellar.  She’d expected to see him sitting like she’d found him before, expected to see him react immediately to her arrival, but it took a long moment for her flashlight’s beam to find him.  First the light swept over the spinning wheel, abandoned and shoved up against the far side of the cage, then a broken stool lying on its side and the other stool, darker in color than the one missing a leg.  Eventually, what led it to the back right corner of the cage was the sound of harsh and ragged breathing…and then Belle saw him, curled up against the back of the cage in the same unkempt and worn suit she’d last seen him in. 

“Rumple?” she gasped, rushing to his side. 

His head snapped up, and even though Belle had dropped the flashlight to reach through the bars for his hands, she noticed that his eyes were red and bloodshot.  His voice came out in a broken whisper.  “Belle?” 

Rumplestiltskin’s hands met hers halfway, but Belle didn’t realize that his were shaking until her fingers closed around his.  He’d sat up a little, leaning heavily against the side of the cage, his breathing still hard and _something was wrong._   

“I’m right here,” she whispered desperately, terrified by the wild look in his eyes.  “Rumple?  What’s wrong?  What can I do?” 

Abruptly, his gaze jerked away from hers and he let out a ragged breath, almost a sob.  “I can’t…” 

“Can’t what?” 

Whatever else he was going to say was lost in an actual sob, and for a moment, Belle could do nothing but stare as her True Love’s eyes squeezed shut and a tear trailed down his cheek.  His face was still pressed up against the mesh, so she freed her right hand—grasping both of his in her left—and reached up to cup his cheek.  Wetness immediately filled her palm.  

“Rumple?” she whispered tentatively.  

Without warning, he started to sob, utterly breaking down while Belle could do nothing but hold his hands and try to rest her forehead against his.  A shudder ran through his body as their foreheads made contact, and she could feel him starting to shake.  The words were barely audible between his quiet sobs, but Belle was able to make most of them out. 

“I can’t…Belle, I’m so sorry.  So sorry…” 

“Sorry for what?” Belle asked, feeling so confused.  Was he talking about those he’d killed earlier that day?  “You have nothing to apologize for.  This isn’t your fault.  I know she has the dagger. Everyone knows that.  No one blames you.” 

Rumplestiltskin just shook his head, and Belle felt his entire body tremble as he cried harder.  But she knew him better than this, knew that no amount of killing—no matter how forced—would make him break down like this.  Belle loved him dearly, but she knew what kind of man he was, and Rumplestiltskin could murder innocents without so much as blinking.  He’d done it earlier, and that was not to blame for his broken crying.  Something else was wrong.  So very, very, wrong.  

He didn’t say anything more, so Belle kissed his forehead gently, which only made another ragged sob shake his thin frame.  

“I love you,” she breathed, and then swallowed hard as he shook his head miserably.  “Please tell me what’s wrong.” 

“I can’t!” 

Suddenly, things started to make sense.  “She told you not to.  With the dagger.” 

“Yes,” Rumplestiltskin whispered, his voice scratchy and hoarse. 

“Oh, Rumple.”  Belle kissed his forehead once more, pressing her cheek against his sweaty hair through the bars.  “What has that horrible woman done to you?” 

“I can’t say.”  He sounded so broken, so hopeless.  Belle had _never_ seen him like this, had never imagined anything that could make Rumplestiltskin utterly break down.  Yet here he was, tears still rolling down his face.  “I’m so sorry.” 

“For what?” she asked again. 

“I can’t—” The words ended in another sob. 

“Can you say anything?” Belle squeezed his hands again, trying for reassuring as her heart twisted painfully in her chest.  Even if the door to the cage hadn’t been locked—which it was; she’d noticed that on her way down the stairs—she didn’t dare go in to comfort him, much though she wanted to.  Something was terribly wrong, something she wasn’t seeing, something that made him shake like a leaf and cry so softly. 

The next words seemed to escape before he had a chance to think, almost in a whimper:  “It hurts…” 

“Hurts?” Belle sat straight up in surprise, her eyes sweeping over the hunch of his shoulders and the way his entire body was still trembling. 

“I…” A sharp gasp stopped him this time, and this time Belle could hear the pain.  

_His curse is stopping him,_ she realized, feeling sick.  Whatever it was, Zelena clearly had forbade him to mention it.  But Belle had not been in love with Rumplestiltskin for so long without learning a thing or two about loopholes.  Perhaps he could answer questions, even if he couldn’t volunteer information. 

“She’s hurting you?” Belle asked, dreading the answer.  Maybe it was just his curse, lashing out at him for fighting it.  Maybe he was talking about something else entirely.  Maybe… 

Then Rumplestiltskin nodded, dashing her hopes. 

“But… _why?_ ” The question escaped before Belle could stop herself.  Of course, why Zelena would hurt him didn’t matter nearly so much as the fact that she was, and Belle’s heart broke as she let her eyes sweep over her True Love once more.  Despite Rumplestiltskin’s habit of calling himself a coward, Belle had never seen him like this.  She’d seen him devastated by grief and she’d seen him ruled by darkness, but she’d never even _imagined_ him so broken.  He always looked for ways around problems.  He didn’t just…cry. 

“Because she can.”  There was a shadow of his old fury in the response, and for a moment Belle dared hope that Rumplestiltskin might not be as bad off as her instincts were telling her he was—but then another tremor shook his shoulders, and the hands in her own tensed. 

“What can I do?” she asked desperately. 

“You can’t do anything.”  She saw his eyes shut tighter.  “You need to go.  Please.  If she finds you here…” 

But the way he kept clinging to her hands told Belle that he was dreadfully alone and afraid, and he didn’t want her to leave at all.  Even if he was trying to protect her. 

“Emma’s keeping watch,” Belle replied instead.  “I can stay awhile.” 

Was that relief that made him shake?  “Belle…” he said her name almost like a prayer, and she squeezed his hands again. 

“I love you,” she whispered.  “And I won’t let you face this alone.” 

Another sob shook his thin frame, and she swallowed hard.  What _had_ the Witch done?  How horribly must she have hurt him to make Rumplestiltskin react like this?  Belle had never felt so helpless in her life, stuck on the outside of the cage her True Love was trapped in while he shook in pain and in fear.  

_You made me stronger_ , he’d told her over a year ago.  Belle took a deep breath.  Rumple needed her, so strong she would be.  She would help him be strong, if that’s what he needed. 

“You can fight her,” Belle said softly.  “I know you can.  If you just—” 

“I can’t,” he cut her off, and there was panic in the rushed interruption.  “Belle, _I can’t._   My curse—” A strangled cry overrode whatever else he was going to say, and Belle suddenly felt him convulse.  “Please don’t ask me to.  If I even think about it, my curse… The pressure builds and builds, and I _can’t._   It won’t let me.  I’ve tried.” 

The last two words were a broken whisper that left Belle’s heart in pieces on the floor.  She couldn’t pretend to understand how the curse of the Dark One worked; she and Rumplestiltskin had talked about so rarely, and they’d never really discussed what would happen if someone other than him held the dagger.  Belle strongly suspected that _he_ hadn’t known what it would be like before this, and a part of her wanted to ascribe his condition to that fact.  But as his eyes flicked up—so nervously—to meet hers, Belle could see sheer agony shining out from their depths.  And terror. 

She forced a smile. “Then I’ll just have to fight for you.”

*****************

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up - Belle discovers something horrifying, and then Zelena takes her fury out on Rumplestiltskin. In spades.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, guys - real life and all that. Longer chapter to compensate. And, um, even more horrible.

Belle stayed with him far longer than she should have, ignoring Emma’s repeated attempts to get her to leave before dawn.  For as long as she dared, Belle just held to Rumplestiltskin’s hands, snuggled her face up against his, wishing she could burn the mesh cage between them aside and she could hold him properly.  He might have dozed for a while; Belle wasn’t sure.  But Rumplestiltskin’s shaking had slowed and his breathing had become a little less ragged, although there was still a suspicious wheeze present almost every time he inhaled.  Staying in one position for so long left Belle’s arms cramping and her left leg went numb, but she refused to leave him.  Rumplestiltskin clearly couldn’t tell her everything that was wrong, but Belle knew he needed her right now.

A gasp jerked her out of her reverie as Rumplestiltskin’s body suddenly went tense and his head came up again.  Wild brown eyes looked at her, and Belle felt him pulling away until he realized it was her and relaxed, just a little.  “Belle.”

“It’s me.  I’m here.”  She squeezed his hands again, and saw a little of the sudden terror in his eyes ease. 

“You need to go,” he whispered.

“What?”

Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes, and Belle felt him shudder again.  “I can always tell…when she wakes.  When she puts her hand on the dagger.  It’s…”

He trailed off, and Belle didn’t have the heart to ask him what it felt like.

“Surely she won’t come down here right away,” she tried to reason with him, only to watch his eyes open and look at her in such despair.  There was such sick terror in his expression that Belle wanted to kiss it away and make everything better—and yet she knew she could not.  He didn’t even bother to answer, just gave her that broken look that told her that _however_ Zelena hurt him, he expected it to start soon.

Her flashlight still lay where she’d abandoned on the floor hours earlier, but the light was starting to stream through the open trapdoor to the storm cellar, and Belle could finally make out the dark circles under Rumplestiltskin’s eyes and the way his features were drawn and tight with pain.  Tears welled up in her own eyes, looking at him like this.  Belle wanted nothing more than to beg him to leave that cage that instant, to beg him to try to fight, for her, for their love—but she remembered what he’d said.  _“Please don’t ask me to.  If I even think about it, my curse… The pressure builds and builds, and I_ can’t _.  It won’t let me.  I’ve tried.”_

Had it hurt him when she’d begged him to try for her, that last time she’d come down here?  Belle was afraid to ask.  Had _she_ hurt him?  The thought of doing so made Belle feel sick.  But before she could gather her courage to ask—because she _needed_ to know if she was to blame for some of this—the early morning sun glinted off something metal around Rumplestiltskin’s neck, drawing Belle’s eye.  The top button of his collar wasn’t fastened, so Belle reached her right hand up to gently brush hair off of Rumplestiltskin’s shoulder to give herself a better view, only to have him flinch…and then freeze.

“Rumple?” she asked around the lump in her throat.  “What’s that around your neck?”

He looked away immediately, his eyes closing as he sucked in a shaky breath.  The movement, however, inadvertently gave Belle a better view of the chain around his neck.   She couldn’t see much of it, but she could see the dry and crusted blood around the prongs, could see it digging tightly into Rumplestiltskin’s neck, so tightly that it must have been what caused the uneven rasping in his breathing.  It was…a collar?

“Rumple?” Belle said again, watching his face tighten in shame.

“A reminder,” he finally answered, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Of _what_?”

“That I’m”—his voice broke, and then he said words that Belle had _never_ once imagined she could hear from Rumplestiltskin—“her slave.”

Belle was speechless.  Just dumbstruck.  A few long seconds passed before she was even able to _process_ what he’d said, and then she felt like a fist was slowly tightening around her heart.  How could he say something like that?  One look at Rumplestiltskin’s miserable expression was enough to make Belle want to strangle Zelena with her bare hands.  Belle was not violent by nature, but if someone had handed her a way to kill Zelena in that instant, she would have done it without a second thought.

“You’re not.  Rumple, you’re _not_ her slave,” she finally managed to say, the words coming fast and desperate.  Belle squeezed his hands again, feeling tears start to streak down her own face.

“It’s what the dagger makes me,” Rumplestiltskin replied in such an empty voice.  She could see him swallow painfully.  “And it’s why you need to go.”

“I’m not leaving you like this.”

“Belle, please.  I can’t—I can’t lose you, too.”  Finally, his eyes opened and met hers again.  “If she finds you here, she’ll make me kill you.”

The Witch hadn’t even let him go to his son’s funeral, and Belle could see the pain in his eyes like an open wound.  She was all he had now that Neal was gone, and Belle could _feel_ how afraid of losing her he was.  “I love you,” she whispered.

Something other than heartbreak flickered in his eyes for a moment, and Rumplestiltskin managed a very small smile.  “And I love you.  Now go.”

Nodding, Belle rose.  Forcing herself to let go of his hands was one of the hardest things she had ever done, and she was crying freely by the time she even made it to the stairs, barely remembering to pick up her flashlight on the way.  She looked back, just once, to see his eyes on her, too, despite the fact that Rumplestiltskin was still crumbled against the back corner of the cage.  He looked as broken as she felt, and it took all the courage Belle had ever possessed to walk up the stairs and leave her True Love behind.

Emma, thankfully, didn’t ask questions, only took her by the arm and pulled her away from the storm cellar.  Belle’s feet dragged without her wanting them to; she kept looking back over her shoulder at the trapdoor as Emma carefully closed it.  She _knew_ they had to go, but knowing didn’t make it easy.

“There are lights on in the house.  If you hadn’t come up now, I’d have come down and dragged you out,” the savior told her.

Belle only nodded, choking back her tears.

“Bad idea?” Emma asked gently, but that made Belle shake her head. 

“No.  I just…don’t want to leave him.  He’s—”

Belle hadn’t known what she was going to say, but she never got the chance, anyway, before Emma suddenly grabbed her and dragged her behind the concrete foundation surrounding the trapdoor.  Belle gasped in surprise, only to find Emma’s gloved hand clamped over her mouth.

“Zelena,” Emma hissed in her ear, and she could see Emma going for her gun.  “She’s coming.”

How had Rumplestiltskin known?  Had it been a lucky guess, or could his magic warn him that Zelena was coming in time to get Belle out of there?  He’d tried to get her to leave more than once, but he’d only truly _wanted_ her to leave that last time, and Belle knew it.  Now she had to clap her own hands over her mouth to keep a sob inside; she could hear Zelena coming closer, and she _wouldn’t_ give the Witch the victory of knowing she and Emma were there.  They couldn’t beat her right now, but they’d find a way.  _Soon, Rumple,_ Belle promised her love silently as the trapdoor slammed open, hinges creaking and metal smashing against concrete loud enough to wake the dead.  Only when she heard heels clanking on the wooden stairs, however, did Belle realize that Zelena had not bothered to close the trapdoor behind her.

Immediately, Zelena’s voice floated up to them.  “Who told you to…?”

The rest of the infuriated hiss was hard to hear, but the broken cry of pain that followed it _wasn’t_ , and she could hear Rumplestiltskin hit the floor like a sack of bones _._  Before she even knew what she was doing, Belle was on her feet and heading towards the trapdoor, but Emma dragged her back before she could make it a step.  The savior was frantically shaking her head, mouthing ‘no’, and Belle could only stare at her, renewed tears filling her eyes.  How could she leave him like this?  There had to be something they could—

“Get up.”  Those words were cold and clipped, louder because they were angry.  Belle could imagine Zelena gesturing with the dagger, vicious and vindictive.  “I guess what they say is true.  If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

Another noise of pain came, this one softer than the last, and Belle thought she heard Rumplestiltskin sob.  What was she _doing_ to him?  If Emma hadn’t still had a good grip on her, Belle probably would have run to him, damn the consequences.  Zelena said something else, something softer that Belle couldn’t catch, but it was followed by another sob, and Belle could feel Rumplestiltskin’s pain reverberating in her bones. 

“You’re being _feisty_ again,” Zelena snarled, and Belle winced as Rumplestiltskin’s response came in a gasp that was so full of agony:

“No—”

The word cut off in another quiet cry, and Belle could picture tears of pain running down his face.  Every sound of pain Rumplestiltskin made tore into her heart like a knife.  She turned to Emma again, whispering frantically: “We have to _do_ something.  We’ve got help him.”

“I’m not sure we—” Emma started, only to be cut off by Zelena’s furious tirade:

“You know what that means, _slave_ ,” the Witch snapped.  “Guess what’s going back in for that.”

“Zelena, don’t—” Rumplestiltskin cut off with a scream.

And the trapdoor suddenly slammed shut, cutting off any chance they had of getting down there, of doing anything.  Too late, they tried to pull open the trapdoor, but it was clearly sealed shut with magic, and they didn’t dare try more than once, lest Zelena emerge and gain the upper hand.  Quickly, Emma pulled Belle away, looking almost as sick as Belle herself felt.  Belle hardly saw a thing through her tears on the way back to Emma’s yellow bug, but behind the wild grief, she started to plan.

She wasn’t going to abandon Rumplestiltskin. Not like this.

 

*****************

 

He’d collapsed to the floor in a heap the moment Zelena had let him, still trying to scream, still convulsing wildly.  Despite the threat Zelena had made a week earlier, Rumplestiltskin had never once imagined that she’d rape him with the dagger, and when she finished it was all he could do to breathe through the pain.  She’d shoved it into him at least a dozen times—Rumplestiltskin had lost count after three, but his feverish mind could make a fairly accurate guess—forcing him to stay on his feet as he wailed his soul out in pain.  Only the curse had been able to hold him up through that; somehow it made his knees lock and support him while the world tipped off its axis and he lost his mind from the agony.

The acid was still tearing through his system, but even that seemed to be a secondary consideration at the moment as he lay shaking and utterly unable to scream _because it hurt too much._   His mouth kept opening in silent wails, as it had since the third thrust jabbed into him, shredding his insides and ripping away any chance at coherency—until she’d _ordered_ him to remain lucid, and Rumplestiltskin had been stuck feeling every thrust as he tried to make a noise beyond a strangled whimper, choking out quiet sobs.  Zelena had finally let him fall when she was done, and now he lay at her feet, uncontrollable shudders tearing through his body.

She didn’t give him long to recover.

“Get on your hands and knees,” Zelena ordered, and Rumplestiltskin complied, his head swimming with pain.  On his own, he would never have been able to start moving, but his curse pulled at his limbs and somehow gave him the strength to obey her.

But his curse couldn’t hold his head up without an order to do so, couldn’t make his mind stop whirling in pain or his breathing come less rapid and strained.  Rumplestiltskin could barely see through the agony, could only feel the acid roaring into him and the blood gushing down the backs of his legs—and the sudden _magic_ pulsing into him as his curse poured power into keeping him alive, keeping him alive, forcing him to stay coherent.  Then magic lashed out, pumping adrenaline into his system and replenishing blood lost in a vicious wave of darkness and pain.  Something inside him knit, just a little, just enough to keep him functioning and hurting.  The surge of magic made Rumplestiltskin moan brokenly, both in horror and in need—it was his magic, _his_ , and it had once been everything he was and now turned on him to tear and hurt and sustain.  

Warmth seeped into his battered body, but it brought no comfort.  He couldn’t control his magic without permission, couldn’t even touch it, and in the end, that was more terrifying than any amount of torture she could subject him to.  He truly was nothing, now, and could only try to breathe while silent and racking sobs tried to choke off his air supply.

Zelena grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head up; he could only whimper, his lower body still spasming.  He couldn’t even make out so much as a blurry outline until she snarled: “Focus.  Look at me.  _Coherently._ ”

His vision cleared on its own, magic tearing into him once more.  It made him whimper again, until he realized that he _had_ been whimpering, whimpering nonstop, in time with each spasm.  Each whimper wanted to be a scream, but he hadn’t the energy.  Rumplestiltskin had thought she’d hurt him badly before, but _this…_ this was worse because he couldn’t heal wounds from the dagger, couldn’t do anything about the bloody mess Zelena had made of his insides until his body finally knitted itself together.  His curse would keep it from killing him, but so long as Zelena wanted him hurting, it would do nothing for the pain.

“ _This_ is going back in,” Zelena told him, holding the metal rod in front of his face with a malicious smirk on her face.  “And you have no one but yourself to blame.  If you hadn’t decided to be so disobedient, you wouldn’t need to be punished.”

He could only stare sickly at the metal monster, unable to even imagine how badly it was going to hurt, but knowing that it was going to be hell.  Rumplestiltskin hadn’t thought that putting clothes on when she’d sent him back to the cage that night would infuriate her so; she hadn’t said not to, so he’d assumed that he could get away with doing it.  He’d desperately needed something to separate himself from the horror having been forced to have sex with Zelena the way he had been, some way to make himself feel less vulnerable and less helpless.  He was so glad he had done so, because he didn’t want Belle to see him like this, not ever, but Zelena had stripped the clothes off him right away, digging her nails into burns as she turned his curse on him in punishment.  Now that pain seemed so insignificant, though.

“Well?”

Panic edging in, Rumplestiltskin looked at her blankly, dizzily, not understanding what Zelena was looking for him to say.  “I don’t—”

Reaching back, she shoved the dagger back into him without preamble, and Rumplestiltskin’s cry was something inhuman.  Fire raced up inside him as he tried again to scream, his mouth gaping open in silent agony after the first shattered cry.  The dagger came partway out and then stabbed in again, and his curse finally failed, or Zelena didn’t care if he collapsed back into a heap, and Rumplestiltskin’s limbs gave out.  Sobbing for air, he felt the dagger making patterns inside him as Zelena sawed it in and out, making his body twitch weakly.  Acid boiled up in the wake of each cut, and the room turned into flashes of color and blank whiteness in front of his somehow still-open eyes.

Finally, the dagger stopped moving, buried deep inside him while Rumplestiltskin shuddered and tried to scream.  He couldn’t think through the pain, could barely breathe.  He couldn’t fight her, didn’t dare, but it hurt so badly and he just wanted it _out_ …

“Please,” he gasped, the word barely intelligible through the pain.  He couldn’t think, he just needed it out, needed _it out_.  Logic and intelligence had utterly deserted him.   The word became a desperate whine.  “ _Please.”_

 

 Zelena twisted the dagger, and it was too much.  Rumplestiltskin's curse finally let him pass out.

 

*****************

 

He came to all too quickly, lying in a puddle of his own blood and still shaking spastically.  A long moment passed while he floated in pain, barely remembering where he was or what had happened.  He was nearly numb, his mind almost detached from his body, drifting amidst a sea of agony.  Then the memories came rolling in like a tidal wave, chief among them the memory of Belle holding his hands, of Belle telling him she loved him while he couldn’t say any more than he was sorry.  She’d held him so gently, but the words to tell her that he’d betrayed her and he felt so used couldn’t come.  He remembered moaning in pleasure and in pain while Zelena touched him with Belle’s face hovering in his mind, cringing in shame and feeling so violated by his own body’s reactions as much as Zelena’s magic.

Then coherency crashed in, and with it came sheer agony.  He tried to scream, his mouth gaping open silently.  A massive convulsion tore through him, and once Rumplestiltskin started thrashing helplessly, he realized that the dagger was still inside him.  Trying to voice another plea only ended in feeble choking noise.  He was too dizzy to speak, to see.  Colors whipped across his vision, and he started to go under again.

“Wake up and focus,” Zelena snarled as his body started to curl up.  He was rocking back and forth again, utterly overloaded, his movements completely subconscious and out of his control.   _“Now.”_

The command surged through the dagger, and Rumplestiltskin’s mind was forcibly removed from the protective shelter of insanity it had tried to find.  He moaned weakly, and then tried again to scream as the dagger twisted inside him, shredding still more vital tissue.  It was like a vortex of pain twisting through him, overtaking him, like white hot poker chewing into him.  Every nerve inside him was on fire or dead with pain, sliced to pieces and bleeding out.

“That was your punishment for pleading, slave,” she hissed, and terrified instinct made him flinch.

The forced coherency made it easier to remember that he _had_ pleaded and that he wasn’t supposed to, but Rumplestiltskin had never known something could hurt so badly as being raped with the dagger did.  Even his panic could hardly fight down the urge to start babbling pleas again; he was so desperate for her to take the dagger out, so desperate for it to stop.  Only knowing that she would twist it a third time kept him silent.  He was shaking harder than he’d ever shaken in his life, though, hurting and terrified and so very broken.

And he was whimpering again, now with every breath he took, barely able to even cry. 

Finally, Zelena ripped the dagger out, and Rumplestiltskin convulsed wildly, seeing stars.  He must have blacked out again for a moment, because suddenly there was a terrifying gap of _nothing_ , in which he felt almost no pain for a blissful few seconds.  Then he felt Zelena shake the dagger, and again she pulled him back from the edge.  A weak moan escaped him as he came back to the land of the living, and Rumplestiltskin felt himself shuddering over and over again, his body twitching and jerking in time with his whimpers.  He couldn’t take this, couldn’t function, couldn’t—

“Get up,” Zelena ordered, and Rumplestiltskin somehow managed to focus on her, managed to stare at her incredulously. 

“I…can’t…” he wheezed, and then his stomach folded under in fear when Zelena’s eyes narrowed in fury.  The next word came out in a panicked rush: “Mistress.  Please.”

His body was still twitching sickly, acid tearing through his veins and his insides.  But the pressure inside him was already building painfully fast, the command echoing over and over again in his mind.  Zelena only gestured viciously with the dagger, and the wave of pain hit him even as his limbs started to move.  She didn’t lift the command, either, just let his curse tear into him even as his body obeyed, spasming and trembling and staggering.  Somehow, Rumplestiltskin found himself standing unsteadily, his half open eyes trying to focus on Zelena as he whimpered out inhuman noises of pain.

After several seconds, Zelena relented and shifted the dagger aside.  Rumplestiltskin almost fell in relief…but the pain only changed in focus.  He could still feel blood gushing down the insides of his legs and the wounds inside him burning.  His curse had pulled him up and held him there; there was no way he could stand on his own with the way he was bleeding and how weak he was.  He could barely see.

God.  She had the metal rod in her hand again.  Rumplestiltskin wanted to cry.

“Turn around,” Zelena said next, and Rumplestiltskin’s legs obeyed her before he could think any more.  Swaying, he stumbled around so that his back was to Zelena, every movement making the wounds caused by the dagger inside him open and burn. 

He wanted to plead more than anything, wanted to beg her not to put the metal rod back in, but if he dared, she’d only rape him with the dagger again, and Rumplestiltskin knew he could not take more of that.  So he just shook quietly, reaching out unsteadily to grasp the mesh of the cage since he was facing it, knowing that he’d need something to hold onto.  Somewhere in there, he started crying silently, tears just streaking down his face.  Closing his eyes, Rumplestiltskin just tried to brace himself, and then he flinched wildly when Zelena’s hand came to rest on his ass.

A low cry tore out of him as she caressed the outer wounds left by the dagger.  Even her touch made him shudder, made him think about how she’d made him—

Shrinking helplessly away from her, Rumplestiltskin pressed himself slowly into the mesh, so afraid.  He couldn’t take this pain, couldn’t stand her touching him like this when all he could do was cry and shake.  He was going to pieces, had gone to pieces, and Rumplestiltskin would have given anything to make this stop.

“Spread your legs.  And move your body away from the mesh.”

Moaning softly, Rumplestiltskin felt his body obey.  He wasn’t sure that he could move without the help of his curse at the moment, wasn’t sure his limbs would obey _his_ commands, but the curse did has it was told.  His hands stayed wrapped in the mesh, clinging to it as the only support there was.  Shaking as his legs spread further than he wanted them to, obedient to Zelena’s unspoken desire, leaving Rumplestiltskin terribly exposed.

Her hand slipped forward to cup his balls, and Rumplestiltskin moaned again—and then felt some of the agony suddenly shift to pleasure as Zelena’s magic wrapped around him.  Somehow he hadn’t expected that, hadn’t expected her to work that spell _here_ , and Rumplestiltskin sobbed in shock and despair.  _Not this.  Please not this._ Please _not this._ But he didn’t dare speak the words, couldn’t take the punishment for pleading.  All he could do was keep crying and whimpering as Zelena slowly masturbated him, getting him harder and harder until he was panting and gasping, wanting to scream in pain but unable to find the air to do so.  It hurt so badly, but his hips were starting to rock back and forth.  No matter how humiliated he felt, no matter how much shame coursed through him, he couldn’t control his body’s reactions, couldn’t make himself stop.

But the pressure kept building and building, and soon enough the pleasure became a different sort of pain.  Rumplestiltskin’s shaking was growing harder, and he almost found himself begging for release—but it wasn’t any lingering sense of self-esteem that stopped him.  It was only fear of how Zelena would punish him.

“Do you want to orgasm?” Zelena suddenly whispered in his ear, and a shudder tore through him from shame and from pain.  Her body was pressed up against his, and Rumplestiltskin didn’t dare move away, just stood still with his legs spread, crying and panting and shaking.  It _hurt._

Distraught, he shook his head, some sort of sanity returning ever so briefly.  He wasn’t that far gone, wasn’t—

Zelena’s nails dug into a pair of torn-open blisters on his penis, and he sobbed brokenly, feeling pleasure surge inside his body along with the pain, and his hips buckled desperately.  It hurt so much—and then suddenly she leaned back from him, and Rumplestiltskin felt the metal rod touch.

He only had time for a broken sob before it shoved into him…and it was horrible.

There was no way any human body—even one wrapped around the darkest of curses and housing a blackened soul like his—should have been able to stay upright through that, but his curse held him on his feet as Rumplestiltskin convulsed and sobbed, metal teeth digging into his insides where the dagger had carved open.  He was slumped against the mesh by the time Zelena had the rod fully inside him…and much to his shame, still unbearably aroused.

Then Zelena’s hand returned to stroking him, and Rumplestiltskin’s mind almost folded under into insanity.  If possible, her touch hurt _worse_ than before, and he couldn’t take this, couldn’t cope with her turning pain into pleasure like this, couldn’t function when she pulled the rod out a little and then shoved it back in, making him squeal helplessly and break down into heart wrenching sobs.  He’d give anything to make this stop.  Anything.

“Well?” Zelena demanded.  “Do you?”

He couldn’t—wouldn’t—

The rod rotated inside him, and when Rumplestiltskin’s knees buckled, the curse still forced his legs to support him.  Blind with pain, he sobbed out another moan, his face pressing into the mesh and tears streaming down his face.  It hurt, it hurt, it _hurt_.  Everything burned, but the pressure of his arousal was only growing worse in time with the pain.  He felt like he was going to explode.  There was nothing of pleasure left now, only pain, pain he was desperate to escape somehow.  Anyhow. 

“Beg me,” she whispered in his ear, still fondling him.

Closing his eyes, he hesitated, shame welling up in him so strongly that he could taste it.  Zelena must not have been holding the dagger, because his curse did not punish him for it, but then the rod twisted again, and Rumplestiltskin broke.

“Please…” he whispered obediently, praying she would not punish him when she’d _told_ him to beg.

“Please what?” Zelena mocked him, and what little soul Rumplestiltskin had left disintegrated.  What little of him Belle’s touch and Belle’s love had been able to resurrect so few short hours earlier just… _vanished._   Crumbled.  Died.

Her hands were still on him, rubbing harder and harder while he whimpered sickly in pain.  The rod rotated a third time, and Rumplestiltskin tried so hard to scream.  How could he still be aroused?  How could that hurt so much?  Even magic should not have been able to make his body react like this, not when he was hurting this badly.

He couldn’t resist her.  He had nothing left.

“Please let me orgasm…Mistress,” he sobbed.

Zelena’s laugh was victorious.  “No.  I’m going to make you _wait_ for it _._ ”

*****************

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next - Zelena uses Rumplestiltskin as she sees fit, a heart needs fetching, and a reward turns to punishment.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long time between updates - obviously, you have to be in a certain frame of mind to write this story, and this chapter took forever to write.

Zelena took him back to the house after that, again bathing him and then rapingRumplestiltskin while he cried and shook. This time she bound his hands back to the rod again, using him for her own pleasure like he was some toy while he tried to scream in pain. She made him beg for release again and again until he felt like he was going to die from the shame, only granting it once he was almost mad with agony. _I’m going to make you wait for it,_ she told him each time, vicious and victorious while he was just broken. But it did not help. Nothing did. Not even when she had him dress in the same tattered suit, her hands all over his body while he flinched and whimpered.

He couldn’t stand her touching him. Couldn’t stop shaking every time she stepped near him. Couldn’t stop wanting to find a corner in which to curl up and hide.

Rumplestiltskin was shattered and he knew it, but what could he do? He couldn’t defend himself, couldn’t fight back. She had the dagger and he could do _nothing_. She wasn’t even punishing him, now; Zelena was just hurting him because she enjoyed it, and what little sanity had left made him wonder if this was going to be the rest of his horrible immortal life.

“Hide your pain like a good little slave,” she said to him, long fingers brushing hair out of his face. “No tears.”

And just like that, it was bottled up. Stuck inside where he could try to scream and no sound would emerge. Rumplestiltskin wondered, very briefly, if he looked half as dizzy and as wasted as he felt, if the agony showed through his eyes at all. Brokenly, he watched Zelena lean in and kiss him, only able to close his eyes in shame as one of her hands drifted down between his legs, magic pulsing from her fingers. Arousal stirred immediately within him, just slightly, and it _hurt._

“New rule,” Zelena told him with a wide smile. “When I kiss you, you will kiss me back. Every time.”

He cringed; the command dug in.

“Understood?” Now her voice was sharp, promising pain.

“Yes,” Rumplestiltskin whispered raggedly, hating himself. “Mistress.”

“Good.” She kissed him again, and emptily, Rumplestiltskin kissed her back, his movements mechanical and his mind desperately trying to find _somewhere_ else other than this to be.

Zelena’s free hand, the one not holding the dagger, slipped inside his jacket and around his back. A touch that might have been romantic under other circumstances—particularly coming from anyone else—was now only meant to cause pain. Zelena’s arm snaked around him, dragging Rumplestiltskin close and pressing against the still-open wounds on his back. Fiery needles of pain tore through him, but how could something so simple hurt when there was so much worse? A whimper rose but was silenced immediately by his curse. He couldn’t even flinch properly, could only feel the agony rattle around, trapped inside his body and sweeping through Rumplestiltskin like a cyclone.

Leaning back slightly, with her lower body still pressed intimately against him, Zelena let her fingers trace patters on his back. As she shifted, one leg slipped between his, pushing against him hard until his body finally twitched in agonized response, the reaction making it past the curse because the pressure hurt so badly. He burned to pull away, to flee from her, but Rumplestiltskin did not dare. Particularly once her left hand, the one holding the dagger, came up to stroke his cheek. He shivered.

“What a good slave you’re learning to be,” Zelena smiled.

He just closed his eyes.

“Aren’t you?” Her voice went sharp.

“Yes, Mistress,” he answered mechanically. Rumplestiltskin was at the point where he would say almost anything to make the pain stop. Now he was just praying that she would change her mind and take the rod out, instead of leaving it in him to ‘test’ his obedience, as Zelena had said when she’d watched him dress.

His breathing came harder and harder as her hands moved over him; the curse could make him hide how much he was hurting, but Zelena had not ordered him to hide his fear. Her touch made him shake pitifully, and Rumplestiltskin knew better than to pull away—the memories of repeated punishments were impossible to shake—but he couldn’t help cowering. He’d always been a coward.

“Are you frightened?” Zelena cooed.

She knew he was terrified, knew what she did to him. And _he_ knew he was. But Zelena was going to make him say it, was going to chip away at his fragile sense of self bit by bit.

“Yes, Mistress,” Rumplestiltskin said as her right hand finally slipped out of the bottom of his jacket, landing on his hip.

“Good.”

Then her hand trailed downwards and back, her fingers slipping between his cheeks and startling a whimper of fear out of Rumplestiltskin. His shaking grew violent and he tried desperately to shrink into himself. _Don’t—please don’t touch, don’t touch—_

“Shh…” Zelena soothed him, her other hand still on his face, stroking gently. But Rumplestiltskin was almost hyperventilating in fear. Her raping him with the dagger had torn him open so far that the rod was in deeper than ever before, with less than a half inch sticking out of him. The end nestled between his cheeks and was mostly hidden by his body, but Zelena’s fingers still found it.

His vision went white again as she pressed her hand against the rod, his hands clenching into useless fists at his sides. They wanted to come up and push her away but could not move. He could not fight. He couldn’t even cry, trapped within his curse with a blank expression and silence. Inside he was screaming. Her lips touched his even as Rumplestiltskin wallowed in the vortex of pain, still unable to see through it. Yet his curse made him kiss her back, made him stay on his feet. Zelena deepened the kiss, moving her body tightly against his, the hand on his ass only pulling him closer to her.

“Good boy,” she murmured, finally shifting her body a few inches from his.

But her hand stayed against the rod, fingers tapping gently and sending colorful sparks across his whited out vision. He could only cower, wanting to cry.

“Focus.”

His vision cleared immediately, and Zelena’s smiling face was the first thing he saw. Immediately, Rumplestiltskin looked away, unable to take the pain and the shame. He was almost surprised when she let him, when Zelena finally stepped away from him. Her hands leaving his body made him shudder in sick relief, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He couldn’t remember ever having been this afraid in his life, not even when he’d been the village coward or even when he’d faced Zoso. Rumplestiltskin had always known that someone getting the dagger would leave him oh so vulnerable, but he’d never imagined that anyone would hurt him like this, or that he would be so utterly unable to defend himself.

But Zelena had been right when she’d called him her slave. The dagger allowed him to be nothing more.

Smiling, Zelena idly tapped the dagger against her hand, her eyes fastened on his face and clearly liking what she saw. “Now,” she said with a slow smile. “Go fetch my sister’s heart.”

*****************

He’d taken the heart from the outlaw, terrorized a child, and hated himself more than ever. But he couldn’t think of any other way to do as he’d been ordered to do, any other way to avoid having his curse tear into him for disobedience. Failure was not an option, so he threatened Robin Hood’s innocent child and watched the man try not to fall apart. All the while, he tried desperately not to think of his own dead son…and was ashamed by the fact that the pain distracted him so much that he could focus on little else. Even his curse could barely keep him on his feet at that point, and seeing through the pain was so hard that Rumplestiltskin almost missed grabbing onto the bag when the outlaw tried to hand him the heart. Only the fact that Zelena had ordered him to return immediately allowed him to use magic to take himself back to that damned cage, and he almost fell upon arrival.

He couldn’t even shake. Couldn’t even cry. Everything he felt was bottled up by his curse and Rumplestiltskin just wanted to scream out the pain and could not even let it show. Finally, he just dropped the heart on the blood covered stool and collapsed against the back wall of the cage, unable to even sit down with the rod still inside him. It burned, scraping at his insides with every breath he took, and Rumplestiltskin clung to the mesh with hands that wanted to tremble and could not. He was more trapped than ever, and there was nothing he could do to escape.

Every breath was a separate whirlwind of agony. His vision clouded over now that he had no task to perform, blurring so badly that the colors ran together. Helplessly, Rumplestiltskin let his head drop into the mesh, too weak to hold his head up, too hurt. Eventually, his legs slowly gave out, and Rumplestiltskin sank to his knees, his body trying to convulse and unable to do so. Zelena’s orders didn’t cover not collapsing, however, and the curse seemed to recognize that. Without it to hold him up, Rumplestiltskin’s legs were utterly unable to support him, and he slumped weakly against the mesh wall of the cage. He barely had the strength to keep himself from falling onto the rod.

He had no idea how long he floated in the pain, only that the respite was nowhere near long enough.

“Hurting, slave?” Zelena’s voice cooed down to him, and fear rocketed through him. She was standing over him, already inside the cage and so terrifyingly close.

Absolutely sick with pain, he could only look up at her dizzily. “Yes,” he whispered raggedly. “Mistress.”

“Good.” Her hand landed on his head, stroking his hair gently, and Rumplestiltskin tensed so quickly that his body jerked. But he still couldn’t show pain, still couldn’t express how very much her satisfaction with his horrid condition broke him into tiny pieces. She really _wasn’t_ going to let it get better. Not at all. Zelena’s voice grew a bit sharper: “Did you do as you were told?”

“Yes,” Rumplestiltskin managed to say around the tightness in his chest. “The heart…is on the stool.”

At least that made her step away from him, made her stop touching him for a few moments. That had to be worth something. _And maybe if she’s happy with this, she’ll leave me alone for a little while,_ Rumplestiltskin thought desperately. He just wanted a little while without pain, a little rest. Everything hurt so much. Even breathing was agony, and he was so exhausted. Rumplestiltskin only watched lackadaisically as Zelena pulled the heart out of the bag and smiled triumphantly, obviously savoring the fact that her slave had fetched the heart she wanted so badly.

But she wheeled back to face him far too quickly, replacing the heart in the bag and smiling widely. “I think you deserve a reward for a job well done.”

Pathetic hope flickered in him. Perhaps she’d take the rod out. Perhaps she would give him a chance to rest. Anything would be better than this.

He didn’t even want to think about how far that thought meant he had fallen.

“Would you like that?” Zelena purred, stepping forward to caress his face again as Rumplestiltskin shuddered in fear. It might be a trick question, he knew. Whatever her idea of a _reward_ was might only mean more pain, and she might just be waiting for him to beg for something so she could punish him.

“Whatever you like,” he said dully, brokenly.

Her smile was brilliant, her eyes glowing brilliantly with glee. “You’re learning.”

Rumplestiltskin just stayed silent, watching her warily and not really daring to hope at all. _Are you hurting?_ Zelena had asked. _Good._ She wasn’t going to stop. She liked him hurting like this, liked him too weak and too terrified to resist her. Zelena liked him on his knees like this, didn’t she?

“You may show your pain again,” she said with a smirk, and the moan started coming out before the sentence was even finished. It was followed by a whimper, and then another, and Rumplestiltskin started to shake pitifully.

Zelena grinned, seeming to feed of his pain like it was some sort of drug. Then she stepped back from him, and the dagger was suddenly in her hand. She gestured with it. “Get up.”

Puppet strings yanked on his limbs and the curse hauled him upright before Rumplestiltskin could even think about how badly moving was going to hurt. Movement made the rod shift painfully inside him, and his whimpers grew sharper as he staggered to his feet. His vision was going blurry again. He almost fell once he made it up, because the command hadn’t been to _stay_ up, until Zelena caught on and he felt her desire surge in through the dagger, silently commanding him to remain on his feet and focus.

“Undress,” she ordered, and Rumplestiltskin’s heart sank. Zelena must have seen his devastated look, because she only smiled. “You want your reward, don’t you?”

“Just do whatever you want to,” Rumplestiltskin felt slow tears start to trickle down his face as he whispered those words, his hands already moving to obey. Within moments he was naked and shaking even harder.

“Oh, I _will_ ,” Zelena whispered back, her eyes still gleaming. She stepped up to him as soon as his clothes landed in a heap on the floor, her free hand coming up to touch his chest. A whimper of fear escaped him as her fingers brushed against his skin, and Rumplestiltskin felt his back pressing against the mesh as he shrank back ever so slightly. But then both her hands came up to cup his face, and Zelena kissed him hungrily.

The order from that morning still stood; Rumplestiltskin kissed her back, letting her slip her tongue into his mouth and not resisting when her teeth scraped over his own tongue. His hands no longer even clenched into helpless fists at his sides; they just hung limply and submissively. After a moment, her hands left his face, but then they started wandering down his body, the dagger scraping down his right side as her other hand caressed his abdomen…and then moved between his legs.

She was still kissing him—he was still kissing her back—but Rumplestiltskin managed to whimper in terror as Zelena wrapped her fingers around his penis and began rubbing. Eyes rolling back in pain, he convulsed against the mesh, his body jerking hard enough that the rod caught in one of the metal squares. A desperate squeal of agony tore out of him; Rumplestiltskin tried so hard to scream but could not, thrashing against Zelena. She only laughed joyfully and kissed him harder, pushing him against the mesh and keeping the rod caught in place. That position forced Rumplestiltskin up on his toes and pulled the rod up and back, and convulsions started to tear through him as Zelena continued to caress and squeeze. He was halfway to an erection by the time she stopped, shaking and crying and wanting so badly to pull away from her.

Finally, Zelena stepped back to study him, and he staggered a step forward, desperate to get the rod away from the mesh. His momentum almost made him topple straight to his knees, but the curse caught him and forced him to stay up.

At least she wasn’t touching him right now. Rumplestiltskin would have given anything to be able to make sure she couldn’t touch him anymore. But she wouldn’t; he knew that. And he couldn’t fight her at all.   How many more times would Zelena send him out to do her bidding, commanded to hide the agony he was in and unable to let anyone know how hurt he was? She’d already done so much damage with the dagger, so much damage that he _couldn’t_ heal. Even if she allowed him to heal the other wounds, his insides would remain shredded until they slowly knit together on their own. And with the rod buried deep inside him, there would be no healing at all.

She touched his face again, and he flinched, feeling her fingers trace his cheekbones and wipe tears away. Her feather light touch was enough to make his mind fold under, make him want to sob in terror. He was so weak, so broken, and he hated himself for it, but everything hurt so much. His heart was racing erratically, his breathing hard and rapid. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t take this, and Rumplestiltskin just wanted to shut down.

“Hush.” Zelena’s voice was soothing, but her excited smile ruined any intention actually to comfort him. It wasn’t a command, either, just her way of mocking his fear. “If you behave yourself, if you’re good, I won’t hurt you so much.”

The promise—one he was certain she didn’t mean a word of—only made Rumplestiltskin shake harder. Then she tapped the dagger viciously between his legs, making him rock back in agony, sobbing weakly. Only the flat of the blade hit, but any contact was horrible, made burns and blisters shoot fiery needles of pain into his already torn flesh. Rumplestiltskin’s entire body convulsed, and he stumbled back against the cage again, his legs spasming and twitching, threatening to collapse out from under him despite the curse holding him up. Sharp edges of mesh dug into the wounds on his ass and lower back, and he whimpered sharply. Even that was enough to make his vision cloud over again, to make him sway in pain and cling to the cage for balance.

“Would you like that?” she asked, and Rumplestiltskin was hurting too badly to catch the edge in her voice.

“Yes, Mistress,” he whispered dizzily. Desperately. He knew he had to live with pain, knew she’d not give him any choice, but less pain was better. If this was going to be the rest of his life, Rumplestiltskin had to find a way to please her…lest Zelena make it even worse. He couldn’t—

“Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it?” Zelena suddenly snapped, going from satisfied to vicious in the space of a heartbeat. “And there I thought that you were _learning_.”

She seemed to expect a response; her demand for one surged in through the dagger, making Rumplestiltskin stagger under the wave of pain. He was so woozy, and the way punishment from the dagger lit every nerve on fire only made his mind even more sluggish and stupid. What was he supposed to have learned? He couldn’t think, couldn’t… Swaying in pain, Rumplestiltskin struggled to get the words out through the pain. “I don’t…don’t understand.” Panic tore through him, and he whispered the last word frantically, trying not to anger her: “Mistress.”

Zelena snapped her fingers sharply, and suddenly the rod inside him twitched…and then turned, chewing into his innards, its teeth tearing open the wounds Zelena had made with the dagger. Wailing breathlessly, Rumplestiltskin crashed to his knees, his vision going white then red and then white again. He could barely breathe through the pain as it raced through him, overloading every sense he had. The rod kept turning, slowly grinding into him as he tried to scream, already rocking back and forth as he twitched and trembled in agony. He was doubled over so far that his forehead almost touched the floor, and his arms snaked tightly around his naked body, desperately clinging to himself in an effort to somehow shield himself from the horrible pain of the rod turning inside him. It made one full circuit as he whimpered out a keening, inhuman noise, and then another turn, and then another.

Rumplestiltskin couldn’t focus. Couldn’t think. He was coherent because Zelena wouldn’t let him fade out, feeling every turn of the rod as it started its fourth terrible turn, but his mind was crumbling under the pressure. He couldn’t even scream, could only cling to himself, doubled over and rocking helplessly, whimpering out broken cries. Five turns. Six. Something let him count to nine, let him feel every twitch, gave him strength to convulse and spasm. His entire lower body was on fire by the time Zelena stopped the rod’s turning, and Rumplestiltskin moaned softly, fingers still digging into his ribcage. He needed to hold onto something so badly, but there was nothing. Nothing at all.

“What _you_ want doesn’t matter,” she hissed angrily. “I told you, slave. What _I_ want is for you to hurt, and your entire purpose is to satisfy _my_ desires. Not yours.”

He was nodding desperately before he even realized what he was doing, his head bobbing up and down wildly, pain reverberating through him. “Yes, Mistress,” he wheezed frantically, needing to placate her somehow.

“Until you understand that fact of your life, you won’t be getting any rewards,” Zelena snarled.

“Yes, Mistress,” he whimpered, blood coating the insides of his legs and pooling underneath his doubled over body. He was still rocking back and forth, unable to even think about stopping the instinctual reaction to the pain. But he needed to say something, needed to make her believe that he understood, lest Zelena hurt him more.

“You tried to avoid that _again_ , didn’t you?” she demanded, and then her voice grew mocking as she sang: “You just want the pain to stop.”

Rumplestiltskin couldn’t see through his tears. She was going to make it worse. So much worse. But he couldn’t lie. She’d only hurt him more if he lied. His voice went tiny. “Yes, Mistress.”

He was almost a heap at her feet, still doubled over and spasming in pain. But he was too afraid to lie, too aware of the rod still stabbing into him and how Zelena could make it turn again. She’d never done that before, never made it turn more than once without stopping, and Rumplestiltskin was so far past his limits. He was whimpering constantly again, still rocking in time with the vortex whipping through him, until Zelena grabbed him by the hair and hauled him upright, forcing him to straighten painfully. Movement made the rod shift, and Rumplestiltskin cried out softly, a scream rattling around in his chest.

“Well, too bad. You only get a respite when _I’m_ happy. You don’t get to choose when it stops. And I’m going to hurt you until you _like_ it.”

There was still enough left of him to look at her incredulously, blinking sweaty hair and tears out of his eyes sluggishly. Zelena could make him stop pleading. She could hurt him until he learned not to pull away from her. She could even use magic to manipulate his body into blurring the lines between pleasure and pain. But she couldn’t actually make him _like_ it; even his curse could not force that. Yet a traitorous little voice inside what remained of his sanity still whispered the truth: Zelena _could_ terrify him enough that he’d whimper whatever lies she wanted, just to earn less torture.

“Get up,” Zelena snarled, and the curse pulled Rumplestiltskin to his feet. Zelena didn’t let go of his hair, yanking his head sideways so that Rumplestiltskin had to keep looking at her, hot tears streaming down his face. “Walk over to the cot.”

He’d never shaken like he was shaking now, and almost collapsed as Zelena used her grip on his hair to haul him around to face the cot that hadn’t been there before. It sat in the very center of the cage, replacing the wheel she had once given him to soothe his mind. Clearly, Zelena was no longer interested in preserving Rumplestiltskin’s sanity; the cot was simple in design, made of steel and nylon…and complete with heavy duty metal restraints.

Letting go of his hair, Zelena shoved him and Rumplestiltskin staggered over to the cot as ordered, but the first step he took almost made him scream. Moving with the rod in was so much worse now, and his bare feet dragged over the floor as his curse forced him to walk, swaying and stumbling and sobbing. He stopped next to the cot, noticing that it was a little taller than average, about equal to the stool standing next to it.   An easy height for Zelena to—

“Sit,” she ordered, and Rumplestiltskin whimpered in terror between his sobs. But the curse shoved him down, sweeping his legs out from under him. He landed hard, sobbing out a wretched cry as his weight came down on the rod and teeth shoved into his insides. It was in so deep now that it barely stuck out at all—the dagger had cut him badly enough that his shredded innards had long since given way—but even the slightest pressure was hell. His cries filled the cellar, and Rumplestiltskin found himself rocking back and forth once more.

Zelena waited for him to calm down, waited as minutes ticked by and his curse somehow made his psyche adjust to the pain. It was easier than last time, or maybe he was just growing more numb to the constant torture. She cocked her head curiously. “Your friend isn’t sticking out as far now, is it?”

“No, Mistress.” The words came out in a broken whine, between shuddering gasps.

“Well.” Her eyes gleamed. “We’ll save that for later.”

Rumplestiltskin felt sick.

Zelena just gestured airily with the dagger, a gleeful smile tugging at her lips. “Lie down on your back.”

Doing so was less painful than sitting on the rod, but every time Zelena had him lie down, she… Swallowing hard, Rumplestiltskin complied, shaking in as much terror as pain. She’d never done this here, never tied him down like this—and even as that thought crossed his mind, magic yanked at his limbs, pulling his arms to the edges of the cot. Metal snapped around his wrists immediately, and then a second wave of power forced his knees to bend, bringing his ankles towards his thighs and then shackles fasted around those, too, pulling his legs further than shoulder width apart and securing his ankles to the cot. The position was terrifyingly similar to the way Zelena made him expose himself in the tub, and Rumplestiltskin’s trembling grew harder and harder. Instinct made him try desperately to pull his knees together, to somehow shield himself—

“Keep your knees apart,” Zelena purred. Then she looked thoughtful. “In fact, you’ll never try close your legs on me again.   If I touch you below the waist”—her right hand landed on his penis, making Rumplestiltskin jerk in fear and sob in pain—“you will _spread_ your legs for me. Every time. Understand?”

Her grip on the dagger made it an inescapable command, and he whimpered brokenly. Rumplestiltskin could feel her words digging in, stabbing its claws into him. He had no choice, and now he never would. His knees spread widely on their own, obedient to Zelena’s wishes. Shame cut through him, hot and horrifying. Her unspoken message was clear: Rumplestiltskin was no longer even permitted ownership of his own body. He closed his eyes in humiliation. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Good boy,” she praised him, nails digging into his penis, straight into one of the still-open dagger cuts.

Stars danced across his vision as his eyes flew open, and Rumplestiltskin’s head snapped back in a silent scream of pain. He should have been used to her touching him like this, should not have felt terror ripping through him like this, but somehow being tied down and unable to get away only made it worse. It was just like the time she’d chained him up and shocked him into incoherent obedience; it was worse than the way his curse kept him from fighting back. Surprisingly, however, Zelena released him after a moment, leaving Rumplestiltskin to quietly hyperventilate with fear.

“I’m going to give you a reminder that you belong to me, slave,” she giggled. “Because I think you need one. Don’t you?”

He stared at her in horror. “Another one?” The terrified words escaped before he could stop them, tiny and whispered.

Zelena grinned. “Oh, yes.”

Victory made her features sharp as Zelena tucked the dagger into her boot, lowering herself gracefully to sit on the suddenly clean stool next to the cot he was bound to. Wide eyed and bracing himself for punishment, Rumplestiltskin could only watch her helplessly, could only watch as a puff of green smoke surrounded Zelena’s left hand. A metal ring appeared once the smoke vanished, about an inch thick and with spikes on the inside. A touch of magic made it open like it had hinges, and Zelena slipped it around the base of his penis, high enough that it wrapped around his penis and balls both. The ring tightened down immediately, viciously, spikes digging into him and making Rumplestiltskin through his head back and wheeze out another attempt at a scream.

It was impossibly tight, even when he was limp, with spikes digging into open cuts and burns. Rumplestiltskin tried to howl in pain as Zelena’s fingers started playing over him, and then he felt the familiar spell wash through his body, felt arousal start to stir.

“No,” he gasped, shaking his head desperately, the word tumbling out before he could think, utterly too afraid for logic. He was getting hard as she caressed him, and it _hurt._ Every touch burned, and as blood rushed into a forced erection, pain overrode fear. “Please no. Please no, please no no no no…”

The spikes dug in cruelly, but Zelena’s magic forced him to get harder and harder, the pressure building until Rumplestiltskin was trying to scream in pain. He could feel blood welling up around the ring, could feel every individual spike tearing into him. The harder he got, the worse it hurt, and Rumplestiltskin couldn’t understand how even magic could make his body react like this was pleasure. There had to be something wrong with him. Slowly, smiling wickedly all the while, Zelena leaned over to nibble on his shaft, sending shooting agony through every inch of him. His sharp cry bounced off the walls, echoing in his ears even after he managed to find his voice, the words coming out slurred and broken:

“ _Stop,”_ he sobbed, unable to take the feel of her lips and teeth on him, his mind folding under from the pressure and desperate to get away from her. But the shackles holding him down would not let him move, and his curse kept his legs far apart. “Please stop. Please, please, _please stop!_ ”

Zelena didn’t even bother to respond to his pleas, just kept running her tongue over him. Rumplestiltskin couldn’t cope with this, couldn’t deal with this mockery of a lover’s touch. It wasn’t just how much it hurt as Zelena started to suck him off; it was the way she turned his body against him and used him like this. He could only shake and cry out as Zelena sucked and licked him hard, his cries growing sharper and more pained as the ring dug in deeper and deeper. He was growing more and more sensitive by the moment, harder and harder, panting in both arousal and agony.

Finally, she drew away from him, leaving Rumplestiltskin unbearably aroused. His hips had started bucking helplessly, lifting his body slightly off the cot—and ripping high pitched sobs out of him every time his ass came back down. Slowly, Zelena reached out a hand to run fingers, oh so gently, down his length, and Rumplestiltskin tried so hard to scream, his mouth gaping open silently as he tried to squirm away from her and press into her hand at the same time. Then her hand moved away, almost teasingly, and he could feel his entire body throbbing for release. Zelena wiggled her fingers, just millimeters away from him.

“Please,” Rumplestiltskin whimpered, not sure what he was begging for—was it release or for her not to touch him? “Please don’t. Please stop. Please don’t stop…”

“Are you pleading again?” Zelena cooed. “Do you want something?”

“I don’t—don’t—” the confused stutter choked out of him, and she laughed.

“I didn’t tell you that you were allowed to plead, slave.” Her voice turned angry, and Rumplestiltskin shuddered in terror. “So now you’re going to have to pay for that, aren’t you?”

Her fingers came down before he could answer, squeezing hard, and Rumplestiltskin sobbed in agony. She was touching him, touching, _touching_ —“Please—”

“Silence!”

The fury in her voice made him go quiet, crying again—and then slumping in relief when Zelena’s hand lifted. But he knew that the respite was only temporary, knew that she was only deciding upon a horrible punishment for him. But at the moment he would rather face almost any punishment if it made her stop touching him. He was so aroused and hurting so badly, wishing for release as much as he wanted for her to not touch him ever again. Rumplestiltskin was shaking so hard that he barely noticed when Zelena rose and stepped away from him; he only noticed when she returned, giggling softly.

Panicking, his eyes followed her as his heart beat faster and faster, thundering in his ears and all but drowning out every other sound. The edges of his vision were rimmed with blackness, but Rumplestiltskin still managed to make out the cane Zelena held in her right hand. Sick with pain and terror, he just watched her, feeling so broken and so helpless. He whimpered softly, another plea almost escaping before he could stop himself. But he couldn’t compound this. He couldn’t make it worse. Couldn’t…

Zelena flicked the cane towards his face, making Rumplestiltskin flinch. He could remember his last caning, remembered that same whippy cane cutting into his back and stomach. Even a week later, the wounds from that caning were still sore and—

A strangled cry tore out of him as the cane landed, without warning, on the underside of his penis. It whistled through the air again as soon as Rumplestiltskin caught his breath, coming down an inch beneath the half-open welt from the first blow, tearing open a burn-caused blister and making him wail. The third strike came right between the first two—Zelena’s aim was damnably good—and Rumplestiltskin’s body spasmed wildly. Each blow burned like fire, and he twitched as each hit, sobbing out agonized cries. The only good thing about the pain was that it made his erection flag. A fourth hit made the room start spinning wildly, and the fifth made tears flood harder down his face.

The next hit, mercifully, shifted to the inside of his left thigh, an easy target with the way his legs were still spread wide. Sobbing, Rumplestiltskin fought to squeeze his legs together, but his curse wouldn’t let him, no matter how hard he tried. The sixth blow found the inside of his right thigh, and Zelena focused there for several minutes, striking him again and again until Rumplestiltskin lost count of the blows. She shifted back to the left before he could even catch his breath, and soon enough blood was trickling down the insides of his legs. Some of the blows cut deeply enough to bleed and others just caused deep welts that burned as air touched them, but they all hurt like hell, left him shaking and twitching and whimpering. Then she returned her attention to his penis, raining down four more blows quicker than Rumplestiltskin could get out a single sob.

A stinging, aching pressure started to build in his lions, and Rumplestiltskin’s tightly closed eyes flew open when he realized that he was growing aroused. Weakly, he craned his neck upwards, blinking tears out of his eyes to verify that what he was feeling was actually _happening_. It hurt so badly, and yet he was… He was…

“How…?” Rumplestiltskin stuttered brokenly. He hadn’t felt that spell on him, only pain. His mind was too foggy to notice the magic.

Zelena smiled. “It seems that you are coming to _like_ this, Rumple,” she purred, striking him again with the cane, this time on the top of his still-burned penis and making him sob with pain. “Perhaps, despite your habit of misbehaving, you _can_ be trained to be a good slave, after all.”

She obviously wasn’t looking for an answer, because the cane came down again. And again. And again, tearing open sensitive flesh and making Rumplestiltskin thrash and try to wail, his head snapping back against the cot once more and tears streaking down his face. She caned him thoroughly as Rumplestiltskin cried and shook, finally moving to his balls, trapped and swollen by the spiked ring still tight on him. That only made his soft cries sharper, made him tug mindlessly at his chains—and remain unspeakably hard. His stomach was knotted in shame, his fuzzy mind so confused by his own erection. What was _wrong_ with him? It hurt so badly; how could he be aroused? Then when he thought things could get no worse, Zelena stopped, and the shackles opened with a click.

She barely gave him the chance to catch his breath before ordering: “On your hands and knees. Now.”

Power tugged at his leaden limbs; her hands must have been on the dagger when she commanded him to move, and Rumplestiltskin felt his body obeying sluggishly. A broken sob tore out of him as he moved, the rod inside him chewing into his innards, a constant reminder that Zelena would abuse him however she wanted. It tore into him horribly, but his body _worked_ , obeyed her commands, and that knowledge terrified him. She’d said that the ring was a reminder; what if the rod stayed in as another one? But he was barely coherent enough to think that thought before he’d finished obeying her command, his arms and legs trembling spastically as they struggled to support him. His head hung limply as he waited for the next order, eyes squeezing tightly shut. Rumplestiltskin didn’t want to look at the bloody mess between his legs, didn’t want to look at the open welts and wrecked burns.

“Spread your legs,” Zelena said with a smile he could hear, and Rumplestiltskin shuffled his knees apart, only stopping when they pressed against the edges of the cot. His breathing was still coming in short, hiccup-y gasps, sharp with terror. But he couldn’t disobey her, no matter how badly she was going to hurt him. He couldn’t—

A nail tapped into the very end of the metal rod, and Rumplestiltskin wheezed out another cry, spasming. The pain almost made him collapse into the cot, but somehow he managed to keep himself on his hands and knees. Zelena hadn’t told him to stay still, but if he fell, he’d anger her further.

Then the cane came down on his ass, and Rumplestiltskin squealed in pain. It hit again, and again, and again, sometimes making the rod shift and his vision white out. He was trying to scream by the time it came down the fourth time, trying to wail, but the caning continued brutally. Rumplestiltskin lost count the blows around the tenth one, lost his mind around the twentieth. Sometime after that he collapsed into a sobbing heap, his knees trapped under his body and legs spread obediently. The only thing that overrode the pain was how afraid he was, how desperate he was to not earn another punishment. But the caning went on and on, Zelena’s unspoken commands through the dagger keeping him awake and aware as blood streamed out of him and Rumplestiltskin cried brokenly.

*****************

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up - a lesson taught, and the utter breaking of Rumplestiltskin continues. I'm still open to requests, so if you have some, please leave me a note!


	9. Chapter 9

“On your back again,” Zelena ordered when she finally finished caning him.  A long moment passed before Rumplestiltskin could force his body to respond; curse or no curse, he was utterly lost in the pain.  He was so dizzy that he could barely hear the command, and Zelena had to touch the dagger to make it stick.  Only then did the puppet strings start tugging his limbs into motion.  Rumplestiltskin could barely spare coherent thought to motion, and he was now very grateful that his curse forced him to obey her. 

He was too frightened to disobey, too hurt, but he was far too weak to move on his own.  Thankfully, his curse helped him roll to his side and then to his back—and then fireworks exploded inside his vision, and Rumplestiltskin gasped out a faint cry as the bleeding wounds on his backside came into contact with the cot.  His back arched off the cot, just once, and he let out a sharp whimper as his body jerked pitifully.  The room was spinning wildly, but then he felt cold metal on his wrists and ankles, and Rumplestiltskin whimpered in terror.  The shackles fastened on his wrists and ankles before his convulsion had even calmed.  Then Zelena touched his inner thigh, almost gently, but the mere contact was still enough to make Rumplestiltskin’s world tip off its axis in agony.  Worse yet, the curse responded immediately to her touch, yanking his legs apart.  A terrified shudder raced through him, and Rumplestiltskin let out a broken moan.  He kept thinking that she couldn’t do any worse to him, but she always came up with something, some way to make him hurt even more.  Some way to make him remember that he belonged to her.

She waited several moments for Rumplestiltskin to calm down, for the burn on his ass to bleed into a steady, stinging ache.  Rumplestiltskin could feel the pull of the dagger keeping him conscious, coherent, and his vision slowly cleared.  Immediately, he wished that it hadn’t.  Then he would not have had to watch Zelena’s smile as she reached down to touch the underside of his penis, her nails tracing into welts.

A gurgling whimper of pain tore out of him as she rubbed his newly torn-open penis.  Her touch was gentle but still hurt horribly, and he wanted nothing more than to yank away from her, but the shackles only gave him enough room to wiggle helplessly, writhing and whimpering in agony.  Rumplestiltskin’s breathing, already strained and pained, started to come in shorter and shorter gasps as he watched his torturer with wide and frightened yes.  What was she going to do now?  He was already destroyed, already putty in her hands.  Why did she keep hurting him like this?  His curse couldn’t even let him really try to yank away, no matter how badly Rumplestiltskin wanted her to stop touching him, to stop stroking his bleeding and torn penis.

Why did she want him chained down and helpless?  Zelena had only bound him for torture once before, and then…

Zelena’s hand cupped his balls, her thumb rubbing circles in frayed flesh.  He keened out another broken noise of agony as she touched him, his stomach still somehow knotting up in shame even as his legs stayed spread for her, shaking pathetically.  It had never hurt like this.  Never burned this way.  He was hyperventilating in fear and pain both, writhing weakly as a rainbow fireworks exploded in front of his unseeing but open eyes.  Rumplestiltskin didn’t know how long she’d caned him for, but he felt like every inch of his genitals was torn open beyond repair.  Zelena’s touch was like fire, and when magic slipped into his system to arouse him despite the agony, Rumplestiltskin tried to scream.

“Please,” he gasped, the word slurring unrecognizably.  He could barely speak through the pain, was completely unaware of the word coming out until it already had.

Nails dug in, and he sobbed incoherently.

“You’re backsliding, dear,” Zelena murmured, brushing sweat-drenched hair out of his face.  “You’re pleading again.”

Rumplestiltskin’s breath caught in terror.  He hadn’t meant to.  He’d just been overloading with pain.  Force him into coherency though she could, Zelena couldn’t make his mind workproperly through the pain, and Rumplestiltskin was utterly unable to stop himself.  He was beyond _wanting_ to be defiant.  Disobedience hurt too much.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked when his only answer came in the form of short and terrified gasps for air.

“I didn’t…didn’t mean to…” Rumplestiltskin whimpered.  He couldn’t even contemplate how broken he was.  “It hurts…”

“Ooooh,” Zelena cooed, white teeth gleaming in her mocking smile. Somehow his vision had cleared enough that he could see her face hanging over his, could feel her hair brushing against his chest.  “It hurts?”

“Yes,” he gulped, not daring to ignore the question.  “Mistress.”

Her hand was still stroking his hair.  “It’s supposed to hurt, slave.”

Rumplestiltskin just closed his on tears.

“And now you deserve punishment for your disobedience, don’t you?” Zelena asked, an edge of warning entering her voice. 

He didn’t dare object.  Not when she could rape him with the dagger again, or worse.  “Yes, Mistress,” Rumplestiltskin whimpered.

“Good boy.”  She chuckled softly, dangerously.  “Open your eyes.”

There was no pull from the dagger, but he still obeyed, watching her blearily.  But his dull acquiesce quickly turned to terror when Rumplestiltskin noticed that Zelena held another spiked ring in her hand.  This one was smaller than the ring still nestled tightly around his balls and the base of his penis, but the sharp spikes inside it were just as long.  The new ring was much narrower, not the inch wide monster already wrapped around him, less than half an inch wide and featuring just one single row of spikes.

Without a word, Zelena opened the ring and slid it on, sealing it shut with magic just behind the head of his penis.  Rumplestiltskin’s body buckled in agony and an inhumanly soft cry tore out of him; some of the worst burns were there and the ring was so tight.  He was still semi-erect, too, and his vision was already blurring with pain again.  The spikes felt like they were stabbing all the way through him, felt like they were going to tear the head off and cripple him forever.  What little of his intellect was left knew that the spikes were not so long, but they _felt_ that way, and several moments passed before his convulsions died down.  But by then, it was already too late.

“Take it off,” he gasped desperately.  “Take it off.  _Please_.  Take it—take it—”  The plea cut off in a shuddering gulp as Rumplestiltskin realized what he was doing, realized that this was his punishment and that she would only hurt him more for pleading.  The next words tumbled out frantically: “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to…it, it _hurts_.  Please don’t punish me more.  I’m _sorry_.”

Surprisingly, Zelena let his babble die down into a tiny whisper before she even bothered to respond, just watching Rumplestiltskin panic.  And then she smiled serenely, reaching out to stroke his bloody penis once more.  Whimpering and convulsing, Rumplestiltskin bit his lips hard to keep the pleas inside that wanted to rise, watching his torturer in terror.

“There seems to be only one way to teach you your lessons,” she told him contemplatively, continuing to stoke him as he whimpered.  “So now I have to punish you enough that the lesson sticks.”

Her hand left him, making Rumplestiltskin shudder in relief until he saw her pick up a small clip from which came a pair of wires.  Immediately, she attached the clip to the new ring, making Rumplestiltskin’s heart skip a beat.  Dizzily, he craned his neck upwards, weakly lifting his head and trying to see what was happening.

“What are you…?”

A second clip attached to the larger ring, and he could see the wires leading off of them…and into a box that was plugged into the wall outside the cage.  Then a third clip disappeared between his legs, and he sobbed in pain as he felt it fasten onto the rod.  _Oh no.  No no no no no…_   Desperately, he looked at Zelena, trying to beg her with his eyes when he didn’t dare say the words aloud.  _Don’t. Please don’t.  Please don’t…_

Last time, she’d shocked him into obedience with the cattle proud.  This time she seemed to have something far worse in mind.

“I’m teaching you your lesson, slave.”

Rumplestiltskin could only stare at her, already hurting so badly and unable to believe that Zelena would continue to push him harder and harder.  He didn’t understand why she kept doing this.  He didn’t want to fight her; he was just so afraid.  Zelena started stroking him again, and he writhed helplessly in both arousal and agony, desperately biting back the overwhelming desire to beg her to stop.  He couldn’t move, couldn’t fight, and couldn’t even pull away. He started shaking his head hysterically, subconsciously, trying to plead without words for the pain to stop.  Even his curse couldn’t conquer his fear enough to make him think his actions through; Rumplestiltskin was shattering.

Zelena’s other hand was still on his face, and it cupped his chin almost gently, forcing him to hold his head still and look at her.  “Do you think you’ll be able to behave yourself?” she asked curiously.  “Will you take your punishment obediently?  No pleading, no matter how badly it hurts?”

He didn’t _want_ to plead.  Rumplestiltskin was just no longer able to stop himself.  “No,” he whispered brokenly, his eyes filling with new tears.  She was only going to hurt him worse for that response, but he didn’t dare lie.  “Mistress.”

“Do you want me to make it easier for you to be obedient?”

Rumplestiltskin cringed.  He was sure that her version of easier meant more pain, but _one_ thing hurting wasn’t as bad as multiple punishments.  What she was going to subject him to was already going to be bad enough.  His response was barely audible: “Yes.”

“Very well.”  Smiling, Zelena finally stopped stroking his penis and reached off to the side to summon something magically.  Then she held up the metal gag she’d used the last time she shocked him into obedience, the long rod that filled his mouth and stretched his jaw farther than he thought possible.  It was heavy and thick, and came perilously close to touching the back of his throat when inserted, but even having that in would be better than suffering the punishments for pleading.  “Will this do?”

That was such a loaded question.

“If you like,” Rumplestiltskin whispered fearfully.

“I don’t like,” Zelena snapped.  “It’s too kind for you.  You don’t deserve something so gentle.”

He could only shake, biting back the plea that wanted to rise.  Green smoke surrounded the gag, and as Rumplestiltskin watched in sick horror, the metal rod grew spikes.  They were shorter than the teeth on the rod already inside him, small but sharp, and going all the way around the gag so that they would tear into his entire mouth.  Eyes wide, he stared helplessly at the gag for a long moment before his devastated gaze flicked to Zelena, praying she would say something to indicate that she wasn’t going to put that in his mouth.  It couldn’t kill him—none of this could; his curse would knit together any injury that might actually do fatal damage or would just use magic to keep his body functioning despite the wounds—but Rumplestiltskin could only imagine how badly that would hurt.

She wouldn’t, would she?

“Open your mouth,” she ordered.

“You’re not…” The words were barely audible.  He barely knew he’d spoken.

“ _Now_ ,” Zelena snapped, and Rumplestiltskin flinched away from her fury.  His jaws started stretching apart on their own, his mouth inching open.  He couldn’t take another punishment.  He just couldn’t.

Zelena shoved the gag in, driving it all the way in with one hard push.  Rumplestiltskin he squealed in pain as spikes dragged over his tongue, cutting tender flesh open and filling his mouth with heavy metal.  He choked helplessly as his body struggled to adjust to the invader, and every motion of his tongue only made it press harder into the spikes.  Tears blurred his vision as Rumplestiltskin tried instinctively to yank away from the horrible pain in his mouth, but there was no escaping it.  Choking and crying, he somehow managed to breathe through his nose despite the horrible pain in his mouth.  Everything tasted like blood, and his jaw was already starting to ache.

“Pick your head up and _hold still_.”  The order burned into his mind, the curse’s claws tearing into him hard enough to make Rumplestiltskin squeal again in agony.  Zelena must have touched the dagger when she spoke, however, because his head came up on its own and he froze in place, allowing Zelena to fasten the buckle behind his head, pulling the leather straps unbearably tight and wrenching his jaw further open.

The curse held him there, frozen, until Zelena finished securing the gag and shoved his head back, releasing him from the command.  His mouth was impossibly full and breathing was so hard; Rumplestiltskin started whimpering with every breath as the spikes continued stabbing into his tongue.  His vision was swimming wildly, the cellar turning into a blur of browns and blacks and pain.  He had no hope of seeing Zelena and didn’t want to.  Right now, his only hope was to somehow slip into insanity and endure the coming punishments that way.  He was so close, so perilously and wonderfully close to losing himself. 

“Focus,” she ordered, and the curse pulled him back from the edge.  Despite his desires, Rumplestiltskin’s vision cleared, and when it did, he noticed that Zelena had a remote control in her hand.

He moaned, a low noise in his throat that didn’t move his tongue much but hurt anyway.

“Now, it’s time you were punished,” the Witch said with another vicious smile, stroking his forehead once more.  “We’ll start at a lower level.  The remote goes up to ten, and that’s a little higher than the cattle prod was.  So, we’ll begin at five.”

He was shaking so hard with fear that the chains holding him to the cot were rattling.

“Any objections?” Zelena cooed.

Rumplestiltskin could only moan again.

Zelena pressed the button, and electricity surged in through all three connections at once, pumping into his body via both spiked rings and the rod buried inside his ass.  The shock hit his penis, balls, and insides all at once, making Rumplestiltskin convulse wildly.  He tried to scream, but the gag caught most of the noise and tempered it down to an agonized, high-pitched, cry, and even as the spikes cut his tongue open, that pain seemed insignificant.  The level of electricity coming from the cattle prod might have been higher, but it had never shocked him in three places simultaneously, and never when he was so badly hurt already.  Inhuman sobs started to shake his body even as Zelena cut off the first shock.  It had only lasted two seconds, but that felt like an eternity.

He was trying to shake his head again, trying wordlessly to tell her that he had learned his lesson and didn’t need to be punished.  A garbled plea tried to come out, but the word never made it past the gag, turning into a gurgling noise of pain as Rumplestiltskin stared beseechingly at his torturer, begging her to stop with his eyes.  Zelena must have seen his broken expression, but she only thumbed the button once more, and a second shock burned in on the heels of the first, another two seconds of convulsing agony and muffled attempts to scream.  Then a third came, and then a fourth, and Rumplestiltskin was writhing mindlessly, trying to whisper a dozen pleas that would not come out from behind the thick and painful gag.  But after the fifth shock, there was a pause, and Zelena allowed him to catch his breath, allowed his vision to clear.

“You’re still trying to plead, aren’t you?” she asked when he could hear her, her hand still on his forehead.

Rumplestiltskin nodded miserably, the movement barely perceptible.  He didn’t dare lie.

“Then you’re not learning your lesson very well, are you?” Zelena made a pouty face at him, and then waited until he shook his head timidly in response, knowing it was what she wanted to see and too frightened to do anything else.  “We’ll go up to level six.”

A wordless whimper of terror ripped out of him; it wasn’t even really a plea, not in so many words, but the desperation was plain in its tone, and Zelena reached down to yank on the gag before Rumplestiltskin could even think to stop himself.  He squealed.

“Make that level seven, since you can’t behave yourself,” she snapped, and electricity boiled in.

This shock was high enough to lift his lower body off the cot and bring it crashing down hard; spasms started to shake his thin form as Rumplestiltskin found a scream of pain.  Zelena left the electricity on for three seconds this time before turning it off, and then only waited five seconds or so before flicking it back on, a triumphant smile on her face.  Sparks danced across Rumplestiltskin’s vision—were his eyes open or shut?—and he managed to scream again.  The noise was quieter than it should have been, muffled by the gag and toned down by his own weakness, and blood splashed down his throat as the spikes on the gag made their presence known.

Three seconds on, five seconds off.  The pattern repeated itself a dozen times as he convulsed and spasmed, his knees trying desperately to press together to somehow shield himself from the pain.  Rumplestiltskin fought senselessly against the shackles holding him, but they didn’t have any give.  He couldn’t get away, could barely move.  Even pressing his knees together offered no relief; he wanted to curl into a ball but was stuck on his back, helpless and bound.  Finally, the shocks stopped, leaving his chest heaving for air and body twitching from the repeated bursts of electricity.   A moment passed while Zelena put the remote down on the cot next to him, and then her suddenly free hand immediately dipped between his legs, touching his lower abdomen, and the curse jerked his knees apart in response to the command he’d already forgotten in his terror.

“Keep them spread,” she smirked, watching shame contort his features even as he struggled to breathe normally.  “I like you exposed and helpless.”

When had he started crying?  Was it from the shocks, or was it now, as Zelena started stroking him again?  Broken whimpers started racing out of him; the mixture of pleasure and pain was horrible.  She didn’t seem to want to get him hard, though, not this time.  Now Zelena seemed more interested in hurting him, fingers wrapping around each ring in turn and tugging hard.  Spikes dug in, and Rumplestiltskin tried to scream, wanting so badly to pull his legs together and pull away from her, but unable to do so.  He could only lie there with his legs spread obscenely, letting her touch him without a single objection, crying hot tears of pain and humiliation.  Brokenly, Rumplestiltskin squeezed his eyes shut, trying to somehow block her out.

“Good boy.”  Zelena stroked him like it was a reward, and Rumplestiltskin’s body jerked in agony.  “But not good enough.”

His eyes flew open.

“Whhh—” The attempt at a question cut off in another whimper of pain as spikes stabbed into his tongue.

Nails dug into his penis, making him yelp and see stars.  “Obedience, Rumple,” she snapped.  “No arguments.  No objections.  No _reminders_ required.  You willingly accept what I am going to do to you.  If I want your legs spread, they should already be spread.  If I want to hurt you, you’re going to _ask_ me to.”

He was too broken to do anything more than stare at her in growing horror. 

“Don’t worry, darling.”  Zelena returned to stroking him, and Rumplestiltskin shuddered.  “You’ll learn.”

She spent several moments running her hands over him, stroking not only his penis, but shifting to his balls, scraping her nails into cuts and welts, rubbing tenderized skin while he whimpered softly.  Then the hand that had been on his face moved to between his legs, and her two hands caressed the insides of his thighs, tracing each wound as he quivered defenselessly.  He was so afraid.  So hurt.  Rumplestiltskin wanted nothing more than he wanted her to stop touching him, but he was still intelligent enough, barely, to recognize the lessons Zelena was hammering into him.  She wanted him compliant, even without the curse to force him.  And it was better to be submissive, wasn’t it?  If he didn’t obey her, she would just use the curse to force him, and then that would hurt him, too.  The only way to be hurt less was do what she wanted him to.

But stomach still rolled in shame as Zelena caressed him, feeling weak and worthless and helpless because she could make him expose himself like this.  Because she could make him submit, even without the dagger.

After all, he was keeping his legs apart without her even having touched it, letting her touch _him_ so intimately without even trying to fight her.

“Better,” she purred.  “But you still haven’t learned to stop pleading, have you?”

Rumplestiltskin nodded frantically, only to have Zelena turn furious eyes on him.  But then she smiled.

“Do you want to test that?” she asked, cocking her head.  “Prove to me that you can behave yourself?”

Wasn’t that what he was doing?  Hesitantly, Rumplestiltskin nodded again, praying that would mean she’d stop shocking him.  His body was _still_ twitching from the last round, and he felt like his insides around the rod had been burned badly enough that they were blistering already.  His heart was beating erratically, and he knew that the only reason it hadn’t stopped was because of the curse.

“Very well.  Head up.”

At Zelena’s impatient gesture, Rumplestiltskin lifted his head weakly, allowing her to unbuckle the gag and pull it out of his mouth, spikes dragging over his tongue and along the insides of his cheeks and making him cough out a whimper.  Even the roof of his mouth was bleeding now.  For a long moment, his mouth just flopped open.  His jaw didn’t want to work, but Rumplestiltskin slowly made it respond, closing his lips carefully.  Even that hurt.  So did lowering his head back onto the cot, but he lacked the strength to hold it up any longer; even his neck muscles were spasming.  Stopping himself from whimpering was hard; he wanted to keep at it, to try to blot the pain out with noise, but now making any sound only hurt him more, and Rumplestiltskin struggled for silence, his breathing hard and ragged, echoing eerily throughout the storm cellar.

Zelena’s fingers touched his cheek without warning, and Rumplestiltskin had not anticipated how badly that would hurt.  Pain shot through his mouth, and he cried out sharply, instinct taking over as he twitched weakly away from her.  The gag had hurt when it was in, but having it out was almost as bad.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, and Rumplestiltskin froze.  He shouldn’t have pulled away.  He knew better.  He—

“I’m sorry,” he tried to gasp, but the words came out in a pained jumble, overcome by the sob of agony trying to talk caused.  His attempt at an apology wound up slurred and broken, hardly understandable at all through his sobs.

She cocked her head at him, looking at him with mock concern.  “Does talking hurt?”

His mouth burning, Rumplestiltskin nodded.  His tongue felt like it had been torn to pieces—but then Zelena grabbed his chin, squeezing hard and digging her fingers into his cheeks.  A strangled whimper tore out of Rumplestiltskin from the pressure; the inside of his cheeks were as torn up as his tongue and it _hurt_. 

“Too bad,” Zelena snapped.  “You _will_ answer me verbally.  And clearly.  Every time.”  Her other hand dipped to touch the dagger and enforce that command, and Rumplestiltskin stared at her in helpless despair.  The curse would make him speak clearly, but it would do nothing for the pain.  She released his jaw after one more brutal squeeze that made him whimper.  “Understand?”

Curse or no curse, Rumplestiltskin tried to move his lips and his tongue as little as possible when he whispered: “Yes, Mistress.”

The words were clear enough—the curse saw to it—but the act of speaking still made him sob.  Even the slightest movement of his tongue filled his mouth with the taste of blood. 

“Now,” Zelena continued, her voice still sharp with anger.  “Why did you try to pull away from me?  Didn’t you say you were going to behave yourself?”

Rumplestiltskin had almost forgotten that he’d done that, but the reminder increased his trembling tenfold.  A moment passed before he could find words, because he knew she was going to punish him for pulling away, because he wasn’t supposed to, no matter how badly it hurt—and then electricity suddenly ripped into him, and Rumplestiltskin screamed weakly, thrashing throughout the three second long shock.  Breathing was still hard when the electricity stopped flowing through him, and he didn’t even want to think about the burn between his legs.

“Well?”

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered again.  “I didn’t”—sob of pain; his mouth _burned_ —“mean to.  It hurts...”

 “Then you haven’t learned your lesson, have you?” Zelena asked, and Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes on tears. 

“No, Mistress,” he whispered around the pain.

“Open your mouth,” she commanded, and he did so without arguing.  Rumplestiltskin wasn’t surprised when the gag went back in, only by how badly it hurt.  Zelena grabbed him by the hair as she forced it between his teeth, pushing it in so hard that it hit the back of his throat.  Rumplestiltskin choked wildly as his airway was blocked, only to find that the gag had been pulled out and then shoved back in again almost before he could cry out in pain.  The spikes dragged through the insides of his mouth, catching in open wounds and tearing several further, but Rumplestiltskin did not have a chance to scream before Zelena repeated the process a second time, then finally securing the gag tightly around his head.

The room spun wildly as he choked on blood, and Rumplestiltskin almost passed out before his curse caught him.  Zelena waited impatiently for him to focus before asking:

“Shall we continue with your punishment, then?”

There was only one right answer.  Rumplestiltskin nodded timidly, trembling in fear.

“I think your disobedience deserves extra punishment.  You _lied_ to me when you said you would behave, and I don’t appreciate being lied to,” Zelena snarled, her pretty face twisted up in anger.  “So, we’re going straight to level nine, and if you demonstrate even one more _hint_ of disobedience, I will leave it shocking you all night long. Understood?”

She didn’t give him time to answer before flicking the switch, and the electricity that slammed into him now was equal to that of the cattle prod, just hitting him in three places at once.  Back arching as he wailed, Rumplestiltskin thrashed in pain, his vision going black and then red and then black again.  The shock lasted three seconds again, probably the longest Zelena dared to use, and then turned off for five seconds in the same pattern as before.  But now the electricity was higher, burning blisters into his penis, balls, and insides as he wailed helplessly, choking on the gag and sobbing.

He lost track of how many repetitions of the pattern Zelena made him suffer, but it was probably around a dozen. His back came up off the cot every time, twisting and writhing, and then coming down hard when his shaking limbs could no longer support him.  Every time his ass slammed down, Rumplestiltskin felt the rod shift, felt its teeth digging in to his already destroyed insides.  Somewhere in there, he lost himself in the pain, sobbing and wailing and utterly incoherent as electricity burned into him again and again.  Even when the electricity finally turned off and did not turn on again, several long minutes had to pass before he was even slightly aware of his surroundings.

By the time he was at all coherent, Zelena had gone back to stroking his hair, but he could barely feel her touch at all.  His entire focus had narrowed down to the pain between his legs, and he had no way to decide what hurt the most.  Rumplestiltskin was just shaking spastically, drained and crying softly, uncontrollable shudders racing through his body. 

“Shhh,” Zelena soothed him, leaning in to kiss the tears off his cheeks.  Rumplestiltskin whimpered softly but did not move.  It hurt, but pulling away would hurt more. 

Desperately, he tried to quiet his whimpers down, not coherent enough to know if she was mocking  him or truly wanted him to be quiet, but unwilling to risk being noisy if it was the later.  He was so weak that it was easier to do so than it might have been; now that the electricity had stopped, Rumplestiltskin was able to slump in exhaustion, quivering and trying not to think of what would happen if he hadn’t satisfied her.  But he must have.  He hadn’t even tried to plead, and—

Fingers suddenly brushed against his penis, and Rumplestiltskin’s head snapped back into the cot hard as a strangled wail emerged from behind the gag.  He convulsed hard as Zelena began to stroke him once more, barely stopping his knees from snapping together out of reflex.  Her mere touch was agony, and the additional two levels of electricity made it so much worse than it had been before.  Even as he started to sob loudly, she continued stroking him, and although he never felt the magic enter his system, Rumplestiltskin felt himself slowly becoming aroused.  He was panting in pain and struggling for air; her nails kept scraping into burns and making tears spill down his face.

“Learn to take it,” Zelena told him bluntly.  Her other hand shifted from his face to the inside of his left thigh, and then drifted down to cup his balls as Rumplestiltskin screeched softly.  Back arching in pain, his ass came off the cot briefly before crashing down again, and stars exploded throughout his vision.  “Stay still like a good boy and accept the pain.  It’s what you deserve.”

Somehow he kept his knees apart, somehow he kept himself from trying desperately to get away from her touch.  Even the lightest brush of her fingers burned terribly; the electricity had made him ultra-sensitive, and he didn’t even want to think about how badly damaged the skin beneath the two spiked rings was.  Zelena kept stroking until he finally quieted, his cries fading into silent tears and barely audible whimpers.  His mind was utterly wasted; Rumplestiltskin could concentrate on nothing other than the pain, could think no further than avoiding more punishment. 

Then her left hand drifted down to touch the rod inside his ass, and Rumplestiltskin’s world exploded into a scream of pain.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Zelena offers a reward for good behavior and brings someone else down to join the party.
> 
> Also, leave me your vote in the comments - do I wrap this up and move onto a bit of comfort for Rumple, or do we keep up the hurt? The soonest the comfort could start would be chapter 11 or so. If you want the hurt to keep coming, I'm still open to prompts - and definitely still using them!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zelena continues her work of shattering Rumplestiltskin, and brings a monkey down to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Several prompts answered here. 
> 
> Warning (in case you haven't figured it out by now) - there's rape in this chapter.

Zelena left him like that for the night and into the next afternoon, left him bound down to that cot with shocks rocketing through his lower body, having decided that Rumplestiltskin was not obedient enough or quiet enough or _something_. His memory on that front was fuzzy, but she had said something about leaving him until he learned to take the pain quietly before she walked out, leaving him with the pattern of three seconds of electricity followed by a respite of five seconds or so. By dawn, Rumplestiltskin was utterly wasted, incoherent with agony but too exhausted to scream. At some point after that, the electricity turned off, allowing him to get several hours of much needed sleep…until the electricity turned on again sometime around noon and his newfound strength let him scream a few times before the sounds died into whimpers again.

He lost track of the shocks sometime around the tenth cycle or so, and lost the ability to do more than cry quietly several minutes after that. But Zelena—who had not even bothered to appear in the basement, having used the remote to turn the machine back on—left him there for several hours further, finally coming down the stairs around four. By then he was only twitching and trembling, almost out of tears. His legs were shaking weakly and his body spasming slightly now that he was too weak for convulsions, and what tears he did manage to cry trickled slowly down his face. Rumplestiltskin wasn’t even sure if his eyes were open or shut, but a silent command to _focus_ surged through the dagger and his vision slowly swam its way into functioning.

He wished it hadn’t. Zelena was sitting next to him again, smiling down at Rumplestiltskin as he trembled pathetically. Slowly, her right hand reached out to touch his face, and Rumplestiltskin stayed still, letting out a barely audible whimper of pain as she stroked his cheek. He had never thought that he would be in too much pain to scream, but the sound caught in his throat as he closed his eyes, just trying to brace himself for whatever came next.

“Open your eyes,” Zelena said softly, and he obeyed, watching her in terror. Soon enough, her left hand dipped between his legs, fingers running gently over his penis, and stars exploded in front of his still-open eyes. He wanted to scream so badly, but it hurt too much, and he barely managed another soft whimper.

“Good boy,” she praised him, slowly removing the clips from both rings and the rod. A relieved shudder ran through him, but Rumplestiltskin barely dared to hope that it might be over. She stroked him for several moments more, and his eyes tried to roll back in pain but wouldn’t. _Focus,_ the unspoken command had demanded, and his mind was clear despite the agony. Those soft whimpers kept sneaking out of him, though, broken and pained and all he could manage when he wanted to scream.

Finally, her fingers left him and she commanded: “Head up.”

Weakly, Rumplestiltskin picked his head up off of the cot and let her unbuckle the gag. Zelena pulled it out quickly, and the spikes raked over his tongue, making a gurgling noise of pain roll out of him. Again, his mouth flopped open uselessly, and even the feeling of cold air on his tongue was hell. A low moan of pain filled the cellar until Zelena’s cheerful laugh cut it off.

“Have you been good, slave?” she asked, her hand stroking his forehead once more.

“I…don’t know, Mistress,” Rumplestiltskin whispered painfully. Blood bubbled up between his lips, but the words were clear and understandable; the curse forced him to shape his mouth properly despite the pain.

“Did you learn to take the pain without complaining? Without screaming?”

“Yes, Mistress,” he answered, his voice very small. He had grown too weak to scream; surely that counted? Rumplestiltskin barely had enough intelligence to realize how dangerous her last statement was: now screaming in pain counted as a complaint, counted as disobedience, and the thought of being hurt more because he was hurt was beyond terrifying.

“Then you’ve been good,” Zelena told him, and Rumplestiltskin shuddered wildly in relief. A soft sob of escaped him, a tiny noise of broken hope. He couldn’t take this anymore. He couldn’t.

She stroked his hair for a moment more before the restraints holding Rumplestiltskin to the cot opened with a _click_. When they did, Rumplestiltskin did not dare move; he just stayed still and as quiet as he could, his tears finally drying. Everything still hurt, and the burns between his legs were throbbing wildly, but at least that was a constant pain, something his curse could force him to grow used to. Something _Zelena_ could force him to grow used to. The thought made Rumplestiltskin feel sick. He didn’t know how long it had been since she had started torturing him in earnest, but he did finally understand that she wasn’t going to stop, and there was not a thing he could do about that.

“Now,” his torturer said with a soft smile, “if you can pass one more test, I will give you a reward. Would you like that?”

He knew the answer to this. She had hurt him until he learned. “Only if you think I deserve one, Mistress,” Rumplestiltskin whispered brokenly.

“Good!” Zelena laughed, and stroked his face again. Rumplestiltskin shook; she continued: “Then brace yourself, and no complaining.”

Weakly, Rumplestiltskin tried to do so, but a breathless whimper ripped out of him as Zelena flicked her left hand and the rod slipped out of his body. He was so torn open that it came out relatively quickly, but spikes still caught on his destroyed innards and Rumplestiltskin moaned dizzily in agony. He could feel the blood pulsing out of his ass, and a sick shudder rolled through him in both relief and in pain. He felt so empty, and the magnitude of what she had done to him was barely beginning to sink in—

“Stop the bleeding. In your ass and in your mouth,” she commanded, and she must have been touching the dagger, because Rumplestiltskin felt the magic, _his_ magic rush through him, knitting up just enough of the wounds to stop the flow of blood. Nothing hurt any less, but he was used to that by now, so he just looked at Zelena, waiting brokenly for the next order.

She continued stroking his face. “What a good slave you’ve become,” Zelena cooed. “You’ve earned your reward.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” he whispered hesitantly, hating the pain that came from talking but knowing that Zelena would only hurt him more if he did not satisfy her.

“And so polite, too,” she replied cheerfully, her fingers playing with his hair until they abruptly lifted, and suddenly Zelena was not touching him. Rumplestiltskin almost cried in relief.

“Off the cot and on your knees,” Zelena ordered, gesturing at a place on the floor right next to where she still sat on the cot. “Right here.”

Moving was agony. Even rolling to his side was slow and nearly impossible; Zelena hadn’t touched the dagger, and his body did not want to respond to his commands. Tears blurred his vision immediately, and a low whimper made it out as he tried to obey her. His body started shaking spastically, weakly and uncontrollably, and Rumplestiltskin whimpered again as he tried to make his hands move under his body so that he could get off the cot. Breathing was getting harder and harder; his narrow chest started heaving as he struggled to breathe through the effort of moving. Finally, he made it to his side and collapsed there, hyperventilating from exertion.

“ _Now,_ ” Zelena hissed, and fear spiked through him, fear enough to send adrenaline racing through his system. That was finally enough to make his limbs work, and Rumplestiltskin half-crawled, half-fell off the cot, his limbs twitching uselessly as he forced himself to move. Slowly, he dragged himself to his knees, slumped over but at least with his knees under his body enough to satisfy Zelena.

“Good boy,” she praised him, stroking his hair again. Rumplestiltskin shuddered.

A moment passed in silence, and then a sudden, sharp _creak_ invaded the cellar. Sunlight intruded—Rumplestiltskin was facing the stairs—and the flapping sound of wings drifted down to him before he could begin to wonder why the trapdoor was opening. A flying monkey landed right outside the cage, and Zelena rose to greet her creature.

“Hello, my lovely,” she said with a smile, gesturing airily at the monkey. Green smoke swirled, and suddenly a man stood in its place, staggering in confusion. “Walsh, I’m so glad you could join us,” the Witch purred.

“I am…what do you want?” Walsh asked unsteadily, his eyes sweeping over Rumplestiltskin in confusion.

A tiny corner of Rumplestiltskin’s mind, the tiny part that still held a shred of humanity, cringed away from what this stranger was seeing. Here he was, naked and on his knees, broken and bleeding and utterly, clad in nothing save the prong collar tight around his neck and the horrible rings wrapped around his penis. Apparently he was still able to feel shame, because it cut through him like a knife, but he was too far gone to fight.

“You’re going to do something for me,” Zelena purred, stepping towards Walsh with a dangerous smile. “Understood?”

“Of course,” the man said slowly, with the air of someone who was long used to doing what he was commanded. The control inherent in the enchantment that had turned him into a flying monkey was probably still active, too, which meant Walsh probably had little choice in the matter, but that didn’t do anything for the sinking feeling in Rumplestiltskin’s stomach.

Neither did the fact that Zelena immediately unfastened Walsh’s trousers, gesturing him towards Rumplestiltskin. “Any questions?”

“No,” Walsh said softly, but Rumplestiltskin turned his head to stare at Zelena, what she wanted sinking in immediately. His eyes were wide with shock, and he absolutely _could_ _not_ believe she was going to do _this_ …

“Suck him hard,” Zelena ordered, and Walsh stepped right up to him as Rumplestiltskin stared at Zelena.

“I…”

“You don’t want to earn yourself punishment, do you?” she demanded.

He flinched. “No, Mistress.”

“Then _do it,”_ Zelena snapped.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t. It was one thing to do what she told him to—Zelena had the dagger and she could force him—but _this_ …he couldn’t do this. Crippling shame cut through him, but before Rumplestiltskin could even think about the consequences of hesitation, the cattle prod came up, sparking already—and then touched his right cheek.

Crying out sharply, Rumplestiltskin cringed wildly away from the shock, his entire body convulsing. His hands came up, making it halfway to his face before he managed to stop them, remembering brokenly that he was not allowed to shield himself from any punishment at all. The cattle prod touched again, obviously as a reminder, and Rumplestiltskin shuddered weakly, sobbing in pain, rocking back and forth on his knees as the electricity made colors flash in front of his eyes.

“Open your mouth,” she ordered, and Rumplestiltskin finally complied, mechanically stretching his jaws open and just closing his eyes as Walsh shoved his penis into his mouth.

A choked off whimper tore out of him, muffled by the mouth full of flesh. He hadn’t been prepared for the pain, hadn’t realized how badly his mouth would burn at the slightest touch. Reeling, Rumplestiltskin recoiled, choking helplessly and trying to scream. But hands grabbed him by the hair and held him still when reflex made him rear back. Rumplestiltskin convulsed in pain, struggling for air through his nose, and he distantly heard Walsh yelp as his teeth scraped against sensitive flesh. He was barely aware of that, though, choking and suddenly crying in agony. His whole body was jerking, burning for air, instinctively fighting the intrusion bouncing against the back of his throat. Blackness crept towards him, utter incoherency approached fast.

“Suck,” Zelena ordered, and the dagger was in her hand now, because the command sizzled in, digging into his mind and forcing his lips to start moving. It _hurt_ terribly, the cuts in his mouth raw and fresh and horrible. But his lips moved on their own, his body obeyed his curse, and all Rumplestiltskin could do was try to sob around the penis buried in his mouth.

Walsh’s hands stayed anchored in his hair, dragging his head forward and back as Rumplestiltskin cried and sucked. He wanted to scream but was not sure he had the strength to do so even if he could get in enough air. His broken body just kept shuddering, trying to rock back and forth in pain, but he _sucked_.

Finally, Walsh was rock hard, and Zelena said: “Stop.”

Gratefully, Rumplestiltskin pulled back when Walsh released him, sucking in his first deep breath in what felt like forever. His head dropped on its own, but no sooner had relief coursed through him than fear followed right in its heels. What if Zelena punished him again? He knew that the cattle prod had just been a warning, just two small shocks to remind him… His shaking grew harder and harder immediately, and Rumplestiltskin started to hyperventilate again, this time in terror. He was so afraid that it overrode even the horrible shame rolling through him, the appalling knowledge that he was broken enough to suck another man off without argument.

“Get back on your hands and knees on the cot,” Zelena ordered next, and Rumplestiltskin’s head snapped up to stare at her incredulously. She wasn’t—

Mechanically, his body obeyed the command before he could even decide if trying to object was worth the inevitable pain. Zelena still held the dagger, though, so he was on the cot and on his hands and knees before Rumplestiltskin’s body fully realized how much moving hurt. Then Zelena’s hand was on his face, brushing hair out of his eyes.

“Look at me,” she said softly, standing in front of him. Trying to beg with his eyes, weakly Rumplestiltskin brought his head up and did so, desperate to get her to stop somehow. She couldn’t mean, _couldn’t_ mean… “This is your reward,” Zelena told him, smiling. “You’ve been good, so I won’t rape you today.”

She paused, obviously waiting for a response, and Rumplestiltskin didn’t know what to say. “Thank you, Mistress?” he whispered, confused and so afraid.

“You should be grateful,” Zelena replied viciously. “But in case you’ve forgotten, you are _mine_. You belong to me, and I will do _whatever_ I want with you. Even if I want to have you passed around like an object.”

“I don’t understand…” he whimpered, shaking harder. But he did. He just didn’t want to.

“Rape him,” Zelena ordered Walsh, and then her gaze locked back on Rumplestiltskin. “Keep your eyes on me. And stay still.”

Hands clamped down on his hips, and Walsh shoved into him without another word. Rumplestiltskin managed a strangled scream of pain, quiet and horrified all at once. His body jerked with the intrusion, his vision going black with agony that was far worse than having Walsh in his mouth. His broken cries were as much in shame as they were in pain; although every thrust made his body convulse, the tears that poured down his face were not from that. The curse held him still, kept him from fighting, and all Rumplestiltskin could do was cry while Walsh slammed into him again and again. He whimpered with every thrust, praying for it to end and wishing he could look away from Zelena, away from the horrible woman who had ordered another man to _use_ him like this. And she was smiling.

He couldn’t even fight. He was so weak and so useless and he was being _raped_ while he just took it and cried. Zelena’s smile filled his vision, and even when he wanted to beg her to make this stop, he couldn’t find his voice to do so. He could only endure thrust after thrust, sobbing weakly and tasting his own tears and blood in his mouth. The rape seemed to go on forever, until Zelena told Walsh:

“Stop.”

Walsh did immediately, still buried inside Rumplestiltskin, who let out a strangled whimper and shuddered. It hurt so badly. It hurt _so_ badly. His entire body was shaking, but he somehow managed not to pull away when Zelena touched his cheek, brushing his tears away.

“This will continue until you beg me to put the rod back in,” she told him bluntly.

Rumplestiltskin stared at her incredulously, not even comprehending the words right away, but Zelena only gestured to Walsh, a smirk tugging at her lips.

“Continue.”

And it did. Rumplestiltskin didn’t know how long, but even his wasted mind could tell how Walsh was getting uncomfortable. The other man’s movements were growing jerkier and harsher; Zelena must have been keeping Walsh hard with magic, because it was obvious that he wasn’t enjoying himself at all. But no matter how much it hurt Walsh, Rumplestiltskin was suffering far more, his body jerking in time with Walsh’s thrusts and his whimpers growing softer instead of louder because it hurt so badly. He could barely breathe through the pain, could barely _think_. It took several long minutes—they felt like hours—before he even realized that there was a way to make it stop, and by then Rumplestiltskin was so desperate that the words came out without hesitation.

“Please put the rod back in, Mistress,” he gasped between thrusts.

“Ask me to make it wider,” she commanded, and her hand was not on the dagger.

Walsh thrust harder; Rumplestiltskin keened out a broken noise. “Please make it wider,” he parroted, just wanting it to _stop._

“Good boy,” Zelena stroked his face again, and then said to Walsh: “Enough.”

It stopped. Oh, it _stopped._ Rumplestiltskin collapsed in relief, still crying pitifully. Even when Zelena had raped him, he had never felt so violated, so horribly used. She’d _brought_ someone in with the express purpose of raping him, had forced him to stay still and look her in the eyes while Walsh pounded into him. He was too broken to feel anything other than violation, too hurt to even try to object. He was just pathetically grateful that Zelena had finally let it stop.

“That will be all.” There was a flash of green smoke, and suddenly Walsh was a monkey again, and the sound of wings flapping drowned out Rumplestiltskin’s soft whimpers. Moments later, Walsh was gone, and Zelena was putting the rod back in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I the only one that got this kind of vibe out of the "Force Fed" cut scene on the Season 3 DVDs? Wow.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment if there's something you'd like to see - particularly after watching 3x18. :) Requests are certainly welcome.


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